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.

Comments

Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes

[Anonymous Coward]

But this guy competes internationally, has he got an excuse for not knowing the costs of international data roaming? With the two telcos I've used, when I land in a new country, I get a text telling me the call, text and data charges there; if that isn't ubiquitous, it really should be. When I see that "Data costs £5 per MB" in some non-EU countries, that's a great incentive to check that I switched data roaming off.

Re: Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes

[naughtynaughty]

Or T-Mobile, I travel outside the US > 50% of my time and appreciate my phone always working and always having data with the data free, though not high speed.

Re:Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes

[DrXym]

The EU is regulating roaming down - it used to be exorbitant but now phone calls, text and data are charged at domestic rate plus a small tariff and from the middle of next year there should be no tariff at all.

I don't see much reason Brazil to do for some random Japanese network although South America could collectively ban roaming charges if they wished for the same reasons as Europe - travel, trade, border towns etc.

Re: Roaming charges is a racket of tolls and taxes

[spongman]

actually, a 30% tariff on an internet connection wouldn't account for these extravagant charges. these are hundreds or thousands of percent increases due to intentionally inflated peering agreements between the phone networks.

Yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

"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?

Re:Yawn

[edtice1559]

We know that those are high-bandwidth applications and we use Wi-Fi for them when traveling. Pokemon Go is not a high-bandwidth application. I play several hours a day and have used only 300 MB since the game came out. The fact that 300MB costs $5000 is newsworthy. And you can't play Pokemon Go via WiFi (well you can but only if you play in a lazy way where you just sit next to the Pokestop at the bar)

Re:just goes to show...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Athletes aren't usually renown for their brains and wits. Pokemon Go players aren't either oftentimes...

Beware International Travel

[Jason Levine]

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.

Re:Question

[wisnoskij]

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.

Not Adding Up

[MyLongNickName]

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?

Re:Not Adding Up

[Skuld-Chan]

A lot of international roaming is like 2 dollars a meg. Its highway robbery.

Such a scam

[wwalker]

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.