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How To Rack Up $28,000 In Roaming Without Leaving the US
pmbasehore writes "While waiting for his cruise ship to depart, a man decided to use his AT&T wireless card and Slingbox account to watch the Bears vs. Lions football game. When he got his bill, he was slammed with $28,067.31 in 'International Roaming' charges, even though he never left American soil. The bill was finally dropped to $290.65, but only after the media got involved." He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
The correct answer is ZERO. He was not roaming and there should be no additional charges, other than his monthly access fee.
Even if his usage exceeded what is acceptable for AT&T, there is no provision in the contracts that allow them to assess that kind of penalty.
I would fight it still.
This is fitting for The Consumerist, not Slashdot.
Sure, we nerds like fancy cellular internet connections and, as people, hate to see something like this happen, but it really doesn't belong here.
Precisely. It's not a grand conspiracy. It's just technology going "a little kha-ka" and the customer having to pay the bill, because a poor design caused him to connect to the international cell tower instead of the local U.S.-based tower.
That's the unfair part. The customer has to pay for somebody else's technological error. If I was the customer, I'd say "fuck you" and refuse to pay.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
But I think the major cellphone providers do this on purpose.
How many of their users would WANT to be able to rack up more than $100 at a single time?
But they give them the opportunity to charge tens of thousands of dollars with one usage.
Logically, they should put a cap on one use, and have the user call and explicity request the cap be removed on a case by case basis, except for super huge millionaires, CEO's, ETC.
This is completely ridiculous. Customers should be able to set a bill cap to prevent this kind of thing. If you hit the cap, your access gets cut unless you explicitly give permission to charge more. That's why I use a prepaid phone (I live in Germany, so it's dirt cheap here).
The wireless provider obviously needs to do something about how much credit they issue people. Nobody is going to pay a $28,000 bill for cell phone usage.
There's a certain segment of people around here that like to play up "personal responsibility". What they often fail to address is the responsibility works both ways. Letting someone rack up a bill on the order of 1000x normal is utterly irresponsible of the provider.
AccountKiller
As much as I hate AT&T, this just isn't their fault this time.
Actually it is their fault. AT&T disables the ability of their phones to display a proper roaming banner. Regardless of which network you are on your phone will always say "AT&T". On the other hand, T-Mobile will show the name of the actual network you are connected to, i.e: "T-Mobile", "AT&T", "Cellular One", etc, etc. Given that AT&T removes your ability to know when your phone is roaming I would say that it's very much their fault when people rack up roaming charges by accident.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
This is ATT's fault. Pure and simple. Unless somebody puts it in writing that they want to be able to spend $30k in international roaming, then they shouldn't be able to charge it. That is an amazingly outrageous sum. And then bargaining it down to $6000 is even worse - at least the initial $30k bill was automated, but the $6000 bill was deliberately offered by a human being.
It seems like the cell phone company MO is to trick their consumer into amazingly high bills, and then offering them ten cents on a dollar, accepting only a 5,000% markup instead of a 50,000% markup.
By law consumers should have the right to limit their monthly bills. If a provider delivers more service than a consumer budgeted for then the bill is on them.
What determines if one is roaming is the tower to which one is connected.
The ship has it's own cellular tower. His phone was connected to that tower. He was roaming.
If the roaming agreement between the operator of the cruise ship's service and his home service has the ships as being "international" roaming, then it doesn't matter where the ship is.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
As much as I hate AT&T, this just isn't their fault this time.
Actually it is their fault. AT&T disables the ability of their phones to display a proper roaming banner. Regardless of which network you are on your phone will always say "AT&T". On the other hand, T-Mobile will show the name of the actual network you are connected to, i.e: "T-Mobile", "AT&T", "Cellular One", etc, etc. Given that AT&T removes your ability to know when your phone is roaming I would say that it's very much their fault when people rack up roaming charges by accident.
How would this work if he was using a data card?
>>>The only real WTF was that the ship turned on their "tower" before it left port
I would agree with you, but the same design flaw exists near the Canadian border. You can be on U.S. soil, and yet still be charged international rates because your dumb phone connected to a Canadian tower. That's a technological flaw, and the customer should not have to pay the price for the mistake.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Your trip through the quantity of data is completely unnecessary. Since it's streaming video, if you figure the game took around 3 hours, divide the total bill by 180 minutes -- giving you about $155/min.
No service I have used charges for system messages. Are you certain AT&T does, or are you bellyaching?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Operating a tower, satellite uplink, etc in {country}'s territory requires a valid license from that country. In this case the ship would require licenses for the FCC. Does the ship have valid FCC licenses?
AT&T does not charge for messages from them. I've had AT&T/Cingular for a decade, and not once have they charged me for that kind of thing. And I didn't have unlimited texting until a few months ago.
I think he should take it to court...
Yes. He should. But he should have accepted the bill from his phone company first, then sued the international-carrier operator for hijacking his signal.
He could have got triple damages out of it, putting him somewhere like up $100K, instead of down $300.
Or B), the user didn't understand how to check to see which network his wireless broadband card was using. .... If it's B, he has no one to blame but himself.
Except that he is sitting in the middle of Miami, Florida - USA. It is not like the dock is even at the edge of the ocean, the port of Miami is probably 2 miles inland - all of Miami Beach and South Beach is between you and the ocean - dozens of high rise buildings obscure your view of the ocean. I cannot imagine anyone who had not heard this story or some similar anecdote deciding to check which international network he was using at that moment. The nearest international network should be somewhere in the Bahamas, probably close to 100 miles away.
I personally think it is a design flaw not to have a system for warning users that they are about to inadvertantly do something so expensive only the very desperate, stupid or rich would want to do it.
Unfortunately noone in the mobile cartel wants to do anything about it because they are the ones that stand to profit from it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register