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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?
He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
Which means it is likely he was in internal waters (description here) so unless his contract had a specific clause phrasing "Internal Waters" to be a roaming area then I would assume it is no different than boating out on a lake in Kansas and not subject to roaming charges. Even $290 seems more than a bit steep & unfair.
I'd pay it and change providers but if he's upset, there's always small claims court.
My work here is dung.
I wonder if there is any danger of this happening to anyone using a mobile near the coast?
When I used to live 5 miles from the Canadian boarder I would hear nightmare stories like this all the time. People, despite being in the US would find that their cell was roaming to a Canadian tower because it had a better signal. It was bad then, even before data. Now I can only imagine how horrible it must be.
This is totally AT&T's fault. However, I do understand that their system was recording his data usage according to International rates. How hard would it be to include a small area of text on mobile devices to display your current rate? I've never been a fan of "just use it, we will tell you how much it ended up costing you at the end of the month." He could have avoided a lot of headache if he had known his connection was screwed up when he originally started watching the game.
1.) Why is this guy paying ANYTHING?
2.) How could a few hours of international data service cost that much ?
I think he expected it to be in the $200 range from the article. I took that to mean either his normal AT&T bill was that much or that based on the amount of data usage (maybe not an unlimited data plan) he expected the $200+ bill. The real issue is that they had the onboard cell tower going which overrode the local tower.
This pisses me off to no end. As a stockholder, I *really* hate reading that AT&T has gouged another one. Seriously.
BUT, isn't there a clause or statement in the TOS that says streaming video is a no-no?
I had a sucky sig.
I live near the US border in Canada and my phone often prioritizes or switches to American providers since Canadian providers seem to have little to no support at the edges of the country. When I was younger, I'd accidentally made a few calls while connected to the American providers and those were costly. My provider refunded me the difference, walked me through disabling roaming (or Home Only option) and told me if I ever did it again I'd have to pay for it.
Agreed. As a matter of law consumers should be able to set limits on any services they contract.
My cell phone provider offers an allowance "service" for a few bucks a month. It is crazy that you should have to pay to limit your exposure.
Consumers should be asked what their maximum monthly bill should be when they sign up for service, and they should be able to change this at any time by calling the provider. Any fee in excess of this amount would not be collectable, and it couldn't be applied to subsequent months. The phone company should give you a warning and then drop service when you hit your limit. Calls to emergency numbers like 911 would be exempt (most providers already provide free 911 access even if a phone doesn't otherwise have a plan at all).
Companies that fail to comply should be fined out the wazoo and injunctions should be placed on credit reporting agencies to withold any negative reports from the provider. There is just no excuse for billing people $30k, $300, or even $3 for a service a consumer did not ask for.
From the article, he was billed at 2 cents/kbyte, which is $20/Mbyte. Based on this rate, and the bill amount of $28,067, he used about 1.4GB of bandwidth. The article says he watched a single game of American football, so assuming that took about 3 hours, the connection speed is about a megabyte/sec, which means that it was billed at... $1,200 per minute.
Under common law, if you request a service for which payment is customary, you are obligated to pay any, even if you were not told that payment was expected or what the price is. The common example is that if you go to a restaurant and order food, you incur a debt even if you never looked at the menu. However, this is only the case when the price charged is "reasonable". A restaurant cannot unexpectedly give you a $1000 bill after you have ordered, even if that price was printed on the menu, and expect payment. While sellers have considerable leeway in defining what is a reasonable price, no court could possibly find that $1,200/minute was a reasonable price for consumer data service anywhere. Therefore, he is not obligated to pay, and if AT&T took him to court over it, they would lose.
I can't help but wonder how many people get screwed over like this, and just PAY it without a fuss. AT&T wouldn't even try to get away with this if it hadn't worked in the past.
Here in Victoria BC if i am down on the beach facing Seattle, i'll get a txt message saying "welcome to the US!" then if i use my blackberry i am charged international rates. i called Rogers there is "nothing they can do"
it IS a technical problem, one that works out in the cellphone companies favor though, so they don't really have much interest in fixing it i imagine.
I had an almost identical experience with Verizon assuring me (sales rep & store manager at the physical store + Verizon servicedroid on the phone) that Canada is included in the plan I chose. The *reason* I chose that plan was to give a 2nd phone to one of my associates, so she could talk to partners in Canada. We got the phones, she started talking to folks in Canada, I checked the account weekly to make sure there are no extra chages (being a responsible customer and all that).
Next month, I get a neat little SMS stating "Your Verizon bill is ready online... balance is $ 3,479.00". Holy $%^&. Their excuse was that they had no idea those charges were accumulating, and that's why they didn't show up in my account (which I was checking weekly). OK, I understand a delay of 24-48 hours... possibly a week... but a MONTH? What are they using for billing info transmission, pack mules???
It took 17 phone calls totaling over 9 hours to sort it out & reduce it to around $ 700 (back-dating an international plan, etc.). Which I paid, and vowed to NEVER deal with Verizon again.
So, it's not only AT&T that plays merry hell with billing practices, other carriers are guilty of that too.
I would like to ask Verizon 2 rhetorical questions:
1.) What's the point of having an online account system that doesn't show international charges - not a DAY later, not a WEEK later, but only for the next billing period? I was especially amused by the "Top 10 Most Expensive Calls" feature - which was $ 0.00 every time I checked.
2.) Why would multiple people in the company LIE about a particular plan feature to a customer who explicitly states that they will definitely use the heck out of that feature? They're setting themselves up for problems.
Verizon: can you hear THIS now? Jackasses.
Do people honestly have no idea how this works? This isn't AT&T's fault in the slightest.
AT&T billed him for usage he didn't think he owed. Therefore it *is* AT&T's issue, regardless of "fault."
AT&T got sent a bill by the international cell provider saying 'On such a day, this cell phone incurred X charges'. AT&T sends the bill on to the customer within their own bill, and was going to pass the money back to that provider.
And the customer said "no, I didn't." So AT&T said, "you are a fucking liar and we are going to bill you anyway." So he went to the media and they determined (in the court of public opinion) that AT&T was at fault for not fixing the problem, regardless of who's fault the problem was.
Incidentally, it's probably not the international cell provider who's at fault either. They sell cruise ships a cell transceiver and install it...they probably are not in charge of turning it on and off.
So, the person that sent the bill initially (the international carrier) isn't responsible when their system bills someone in the US for international calls when it is quite likely that their tower was operating illegally at the time? That's interesting logic. If they just "sell the service" to the cruise ships, the who turns it on and off? The cruise director? Then it isn't provided by the carrier, but by the cruise ship.
But in any case, what happened here is someone was hijacked by a rogue tower and billed by AT&T for usage he incurred while in an area covered by AT&T. No matter the cause of the mess, AT&T is the *only* entity that can fix his bill, and if AT&T was screwed out of money because of it, they should contact the person that passed them the fraudulent bill, as well as contacting the FCC or anyone else that needs to get involved about the rogue tower operating in Miami.
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