$3000 Data Bill For International Roaming

attsucks · 08-14-2007, 02:14 AM

I'm sure you guys are all Einsteins out there and would never make this mistake. I will open up myself to all of the wise ass comments about how stupid I am. But just to try to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I made, please read this if you are considering buying an iphone or planning on taking your iphone outside the US.

ATT, being the fine example of Corporate America that it is, really wants to take as much money as possible from you. No surprise there huh? Well the surprise might be what they consider to be reasonable for their international data roaming charge. My family returned from a vacation in Canada a few weeks ago to receive a $3000 bill from ATT for international roaming charges. My wife works a LOT and being on vacation doesn't put much of a dent in her work schedule. She wanted to connect to her VPN, and I thought I would use the phone's GPRS to connect her laptop to the network. Well 200 MB later at over $15 per MB meant a whole lot of money to ATT shareholders. Don't you love America!

Hawk · 08-14-2007, 04:12 AM

Originally Posted by attsucks

I'm sure you guys are all Einsteins out there and would never make this mistake. I will open up myself to all of the wise ass comments about how stupid I am. But just to try to prevent someone else from making the same mistake I made, please read this if you are considering buying an iphone or planning on taking your iphone outside the US.

ATT, being the fine example of Corporate America that it is, really wants to take as much money as possible from you. No surprise there huh? Well the surprise might be what they consider to be reasonable for their international data roaming charge. My family returned from a vacation in Canada a few weeks ago to receive a $3000 bill from ATT for international roaming charges. My wife works a LOT and being on vacation doesn't put much of a dent in her work schedule. She wanted to connect to her VPN, and I thought I would use the phone's GPRS to connect her laptop to the network. Well 200 MB later at over $15 per MB meant a whole lot of money to ATT shareholders. Don't you love America!

Holy Crap! Damn Dude, I would call and argue that one hardcore. I had a small "problem" when I first got signed up from my previous plan to the iphone plan. None of the specific features for the iPhone plan were turned on, and in a week of casual data usage, my bill went over 300.00. However, I monitor my account from their webpage, and caughr it fairly quickly and called and got it corrected.

ahaxton · 08-14-2007, 04:13 AM

Definitely read through this everyone:

http://www.wireless.att.com/learn/ar...hone-terms.jsp

It's not that long either.

ahaxton · 08-14-2007, 04:15 AM

Originally Posted by Hawk

Holy Crap! Damn Dude, I would call and argue that one hardcore. I had a small "problem" when I first got signed up from my previous plan to the iphone plan. None of the specific features for the iPhone plan were turned on, and in a week of casual data usage, my bill went over 300.00. However, I monitor my account from their webpage, and caughr it fairly quickly and called and got it corrected.

He can't fight it since he was international roaming on data.

Im not sure why the OP would think it'd be free when he isn't accessing the internet through AT&T's network.

attsucks · 08-14-2007, 08:09 AM

Originally Posted by ahaxton

He can't fight it since he was international roaming on data.

Im not sure why the OP would think it'd be free when he isn't accessing the internet through AT&T's network.

My wife and I have a timeshare in Mexico, and in December 06, we were planning on going down there. We called ATT and asked if our phone would work. We were told by the CSR that international roaming only works if you have international roaming turned on. When we were told the rates, we said no way, that's too expensive and we didn't use our phone in Mexico.

The CSR actually should have said that international roaming doesn't work IN MEXICO unless you have international roaming turned on, because in Canada international roaming will work even if you don't have international roaming turned on. So when the phone worked, we made the horribly wrong assumption that since it worked, we were not roaming and were using the unlimited data plan. Like I said, very expensive assumption.

We have been going back and forth with several CSR's and several managers and we got $250 knocked off, but they want there damn money or they are going to turn off the phone. So we are talking to an attorney and the Minnesota Attorney General's office to see if we can fight it any more. ATT is saying case closed, pay up chump.