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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.
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
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).
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.
>>>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