Posted on 01/29/2010 12:36:59 PM PST by Drew68
CHULA VISTA — Letty Soriano and her 16-year-old daughter, Janel, made a pact for their trip to Dubai to limit their international roaming charges on the girl’s cell phone: Janel could text-message her friends but not call them. If she got lost, Janel could call or text her mom.
Surfing the Internet on her smart phone was left to Janel’s discretion. As Soriano understood it from a phone call with her carrier, there would be no additional cost for that, other than the standard charges included in the family’s data plan.
But two days after returning from visiting her sister in Dubai, Soriano’s service was suspended and she received a message to call T-Mobile. She learned that her daughter had racked up $16,379 in data-roaming charges accrued by surfing the Internet.
“I couldn’t sleep for two weeks,” Soriano said. “I was walking around like a dead person.”
Christopher Elliott, travel ombudsman for National Geographic Traveler, said he has fielded several similar complaints.
“When you travel overseas with your cell phone, all bets are off,” Elliott said. “The only way to ensure that you won’t have to pay roaming charges is to leave your cell phone at home.”
Others advise turning off international data-roaming features to prevent phones from automatically downloading data, such as e-mail, even if the phone isn’t being used.
The Federal Communications Commission receives many complaints about mobile-phone-company billing and rate charges, but the agency said it can’t provide figures without a public-records request, which could take weeks or months.
Soriano and her attorney, Cyrus Seradj, tried for eight months to negotiate with T-Mobile in an attempt to have the charges waived. They cited Soriano’s call to T-Mobile before she left on her trip to confirm the cost of overseas service.
After Soriano complained to T-Mobile, the company offered a 25 percent discount on the data charges. But that’s as far as it would go, saying Soriano never asked about overseas rates for using the Internet.
“It is T-Mobile’s position that the disputed data charges are valid and owed,” wrote Justin Chrisman, who works in the company’s customer-relations department.
But after receiving a phone call from The San Diego Union-Tribune inquiring about Soriano’s case last week, T-Mobile said in an e-mail message that it would waive the charges “as a sign of good will toward our customer,” said Krista Berlincourt, with Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a public-relations firm that works for T-Mobile.
How does one rack up a $16,000 phone bill?
While in Dubai, Janel surfed the Internet the way she does at home, looking at YouTube videos and logging into MySpace. But using a cell phone while abroad incurs higher roaming charges than at home. T-Mobile charges $15 per megabyte to use data services overseas.
Soriano said she was stunned to hear of the exorbitant cost associated with Janel’s Internet use and is furious with T-Mobile for not being more explicit about how international data-roaming charges are incurred.
T-Mobile doesn’t discuss individual accounts. International roaming fees are listed on its Web page.
Soriano said she didn’t look at the Web page but called directly to inquire. She said the phone company should have warned her about the ballooning charges while she was in Dubai.
Mobile-phone carriers’ failure to alert their customers that they’re racking up massive bills as a courtesy the way credit-card companies do makes them unfriendly, said Mindy Spatt, with The Utility Reform Network, based in San Francisco.
Michael Shames, executive director of the Utility Consumers’ Action Network, a local consumer group, said phone carriers typically back off once another organization gets involved.
“The international roaming cases are jaw-dropping,” Shames said. “They are notable because of the sheer audacity of the bill.”
His organization has gotten involved in such cases multiple times, he said.
“When you get these kinds of bills, take a big, deep breath,” Shames said. “Rule 1 is keep breathing. Rule 2 is keep a sense of humor because you will work through it. It’s rare that a customer ever has to pay more than a fraction of it.”
Stupid is as stupid does.
Too many parents are far too lenient with their offspring regarding cell phones, etc.
Parent is a doofus. Kid is a spoiled brat, who got off with nothing in the way of consequences.
Didn’t teach either one of them a single thing.
I think at the least they should have paid about $4000 for all their stupidity. Kid should have had to pay it out of her allowance even if it took 5 years.
The Audacity of Roaming.
lol.
i used to always turn off email updates when overseas. now i just leave it off. phone is for texting home (call me at...) or voice in emergency.
Reminds me of that girl in National Lampoons’ “European Vacation” when she kept calling her boyfriend back in the states.
I’d say that some sophisticated enough to travel to Dubai should have been aware of the charges. This is not the first time a ‘mistake’ like this has been publicized. Truthfully? If I owned the company I wouldn’t drop any charges unless there were very extenuating circumstances. She didn’t even ask about the rates.
The girl would have been better off visiting free internet hot spots (if such a thing is provided in Dubai) with a netbook.
If you have a GSM phone and are roaming where GSM is available you can often buy a local ‘chip’ and have local service for very cheap (don’t know specifically for dubai though). Iirc all of TMobile phones in the US are GSM so this should have been possible for her.
She won’t be doin’ much roamin’ if the parents ground her til she turns 30...
Parent probably believed what the daughter was permitted to do would be cheap or free. The family did agree on the measures to take, but they were unfortunately not sufficient.
If I were the consumer king, I would require the phones to flash a warning and a yes/no choice box up on the screen when an exorbitant charge was about to be incurred.
$16000 / $15 per MB = 1066 MB
LOL “Don’t cry Audrey, Dad is not going to cut off his @##$!” Dana Hill was my favorite Audrey. It is sad she died before her time.
I actually lost my T-Mobile cell phone in Dubai. It fell out of my pocket in a taxi and I didn't notice it was missing until the cab was long gone. Being well aware of the possible charges that would acrue of someone found it and used it, I immediately contacted T-Mobile and had my service suspended. They were really cool about it and I lucked out that nobody used my phone.
I really needed a phone so I went and purchased a Nokia and set up service through Etisalat a popular UAE provider. I had to prepay for minutes but the international rates were so cheap compared to T-Mobile that I actually saved money by using a locally-purchased phone service to call home.
The cool part was I was able to bring a very nice Nokia (with Arabic writing on the keys) back to the US and use it with my T-Mobile SIM card.
My kids’ phones are capped at the vendor, no extraneous charges, anything that’s billable is blocked, period. No accidents, no oversights, no ridiculous ringtone expenses. I also have content filtering and parental controls. Costs me $5 a month for this power, I view it as an insurance premium. I have absolute cost certainty.
I won’t name the provider but the first letter is the 22nd letter of the alphabet.
I have a housemate using Sprint in the USA that periodically gets totally bogus charges for alleged international calls that were never made. When he calls customer service the one drawing the short straw gets him.
It's good to know that those services are available. My son is way too young for his own phone but I've always wondered about those "send text to ###" commercials I see on TV and how shocked many parents must be when they receive huge bills for for some useless service that their kids racked up.
I’ve never had a wrong charge on AT&T......however, I don’t make any overseas calls, either. My point about the lady paying the charges is that sophistication and technology pays a price. Those who use it blindly can end up surprised. It’s just like ignorance of the law, it’s no excuse for not even wondering (which I think she did because she’d cautioned her daughter and ‘agreed’ on usage) She just didn’t follow through.
Similar deals are available in Asia from what friends tell me. But when friends from Singapore, Hong Kong and Indosnesia come to visit, they simply get a locally purchased phone.
When I traveled to Asia, there was never, ever a shortage of internet cafes around. As per my calculations, they were dirt cheap. I did bring my cell but it just took me seconds to look, then shut off.
To many things in life, discipline is the key.
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