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Japanese Olympic Champion Racks Up $5,000 Bill Playing Pokemon Go in Brazil (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader writes: A Japanese Olympics star has blamed Pokemon Go after being hit with a 500,000 yen (about $5,000) bill in roaming charges from his carrier. Artistic gymnast Kohei Uchimura, who won gold at the 2012 Games in London and is the reigning world champion, said he only downloaded the game after arriving in Sao Paulo to train for Rio, but quickly got hooked despite not having arranged a flat rate for data roaming. Uchimura "couldn't believe his eyes" when he saw the bill, according to the Kyodo news agency, with teammate Kenzo Shirai saying "He looked dead at the team meal that day." Even though Pokemon Go isn't particularly heavy on data and there were likely other culprits -- the game only officially came out in Brazil today, though Uchimura may have been playing the Japanese version -- roaming charges can rack up extremely quickly when you use your phone abroad for pretty much anything online.
Despite this is the digital age of free information, ISP/Phone carriers still rape and pillage wholesale where they can. I'm not a fan of big government but this is one area they need SEVERE regulation. Those fuckers are the oil barons and railroad tycoons of this century.
"The story has a happy ending, though — after Uchimura called his carrier to explain, he was let off with a flat daily charge of around $30, which is enough to make him probably wish he'd just bought a Brazilian SIM card but you know, not $5,000."
It's comical. This could have happened with Youtube, Candy Crush, etc. Is it noteworthy because a) it's the Olympics, b) it's Pokemon Go, c) it's a slow news day or d) all of the above?
Just goes to show you can be an Olympic champion and still be an abject moron... but to be fair, Japanese aren't exactly encouraged to think and function independently...
Just wait for auto drive cars to do the same even in boarder areas where you did not cross the boarder but picked up an tower on the other side.
Now roaming fees are so high you can rack up really big bill before automated systems can kick in and cut it off.
We need to force all phones to be unlocked or have an roaming cap say max $0.05 a meg.
$15-$20 a meg with rounding up add's up fast!
>>Athletes aren't usually renown for their brains and wits.
He's an "artistic gymnast," so this could have played out either way...
I hate to say it, but roaming taxes are a tax on the stupid, or at least on people with pockets too deep to care, or a company account etc. It's pretty easy these days to either give your carrier a phone call before leaving, to arrange an international rate for your trip, or to buy a local sim card or throwaway phone while you are there. Or just turn off your data roaming and use wifi. It's not like ten years ago when people didn't understand data roaming. People should know these things, there are news articles once a month.
Just because I can hook a shark from a boat, I do no offer to wrestle it in the water.
This is the kind of thing that is told to people traveling abroad. He may not have been listening. After all he was going to the Olympics! This is just one of many learning experiences that he will go through during life. The take away is "pay attention" and prepare for all contingencies. He is now a bit wiser for it.
It's his own dumb fault.
Way to maintain the stereotype of the "dumb jock"...
A lot of people might travel internationally and just assume that their phone will serve them data at the same cost as in their home country. When we were going to go on a cruise to the Bahamas, we inquired about how much data would cost. Once we knew how much ($2 per MB), we made sure to put our phones in airplane mode for the duration of the trip, using them only to take photos that could be shared later via the ship's WiFi (which we had a set number of minutes access to) or when we returned to the US.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Maybe they mistyped "autistic"?
Roaming charges are slang for some carrier you do not have a contract with let you use their network. The service roaming changes serve is allowing people to continue to use their phones even when out of range. They can charge anything they want, because you already signed a blank check.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No, they are just normal trade. A merchant is not going to trade you something that is worth less or the same as something they already have.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No but the prices are stated in advance and you aren't paying the third-party carrier directly. They are willing to sell you the data at reasonable rates. As has already been pointed out, just buy a SIM card for the dominant carrier wherever you are traveling. Instead, he used his SIM card under agreement with his Japanese carrier where he had agreed to pay this much for data roaming. Probably because he didn't care about the price of this part of the service as he had no intention of actually using it.
Buying a local SIM card is actually a PITA because people can't reach you at your normal mobile number. You have to inform everybody. Many business people tolerate large roaming bills in order to stay connected to customers. This is news because normally when traveling you can avoid data roaming charges by using WiFi. Most of us turn off cellular data when traveling international. I actually turn my phone off and leave it off when traveling internationally. With exciting new applications like Pokemon Go, this may no longer be a viable strategy.
I have played the game pretty heavily while on vacation. In the 6 days I had to play, I left the thing on for 5-6 hours per day. In that time Pokemon go used 100 megs of data. What kind of plan was he on that cost so much?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
the game only officially came out in Brazil today, though Uchimura may have been playing the Japanese version
This doesn't matter, since the servers blocked pokemon from spawning in Brazil before today. So what exactly was he doing two weeks ago when he used all this data?
The whole mobile roaming is such a scam. I mean, with pretty much everything that you pay money for, you can always get a clearly define price *before* deciding on a purchase. And a lot of times (stores with a check-out) you can even say "it's too expensive, I don't want that". With roaming charges (both data and voice), you have to jump through hoops (i.e. call someone and wait on hold for XX minutes) to get the price, and often enough they cannot tell you because you don't always know your exact location beforehand. Why can you get that info from your phone? Right there and then, before making a call, or before incurring data charges. I'm sure it's technically possible, and if the info isn't yet sent to the phone every time to change roaming provider, I'm sure we can force it to happen via legislation. For once Congress can do some good.
Also, it's easy to call someone a moron, but when you are under a lot of pressure because you are going to compete in the Olympics, I can totally see forgetting that I'm in a different country when checking my phone and deciding to catch some 'mons and losing track of time.
Nintendo will pick up the tab in addition to paying what they owe him for shilling the game.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
It doesn't seem as though you had a lot of experience forming words, prior to showing up here...
Looks like it's the Japanese Olympians!
(one of my research colleagues is a Japanese Brazilian, actually, it's kind of sad the current situation there)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If I were King of the World for a day, the second group of people I'd order summary executions for would be anyone that is upper mid-management or above in a cable or phone company. Fortunately for them and spammers/scammers/fraudsters/robocallers, I won't get the job of King.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Yeah - as the other guy said. Look into Google Voice. I use it (not internationally though). Wifi calling yes - but you can also add phone numbers for it to call - and maybe it can (for a smaller fee) redirect calls to your international SIM phone#.
Somebody used to build a phone that had two SIMs in it. It could operate on a dual phone#. It was long ago so I can't remember who - but you had multiple phone# and could switch between them.
Google Voice operates like a PBX - people call the virtual number and it redirects the call to a list of real phone#. At the very least get your vm in your inbox - transcribed as text too!
I use the free edition here in the USA to simply redirect calls to my landline & cell# (so mom only needs to call one number). And it has terrific spam call filtering. It also lets you spoof your caller-id when making outbound calls so that the virtual# appears (great for calling the bank). I'm an iPhone person - but I hear it has better integration on Android.
Although - the SMS UI sucks. And not all services can SMS to it. As a "chat" app it stinks. But it is one platform for all messaging & calls. Cell phone, web browser, landline. I believe there are business plans - and for making direct calls as Voip you can pay per-minute fees.
Check it out - it might work for you.
I use Google Voice. Unfortunately sometimes I forget to use the Google Voice dialer so people end up with my mobile # on their inbound calling list and call it back. When traveling international, I do everything I can to minimize the cost but occasionally I get an email from our IT team that the bill was over $500.