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.
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.
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.
True, but apparently they did contact the phone company in good faith before they went. However, they didn't ask enough questions, and the company representative didn't volunteer enough information or ask enough questions either.
I'm impressed that T-Mobile waved the charges (under duress of bad PR though). However a $15/MB data charge is ridiculous, especially in modern Dubai where high-speed internet and cell phones are the norm. There's no way their marginal cost of service approaches 1/10 of that. But that's how cell companies abuse the customer.