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$3000 International Data Roaming Bill

Take this always under your consideration...

Remember that representatives are the lowest literate people ever, once they undertand something they get promoted and a new ******* will take his/her place.

I was charge with a 56$ bill a year and a half after I left the US. I had to pay everything because arguing was just worst for me. Not to mention Bank of America who reversed 3 of 4 fraudulent transactions I had and the one that was left went all the way to my credit just because the leidy didn't paid attention about my complain about the 4 fraudulent charges.

Consider as well, many call centers are not in the US. I have friends with call centers here in Venezuela and even the girls can speak english that is it.

There are so many glitches in the system starting by mediocre people working around it.
 
They need to allow you to turn off EDGE...plain and simple..

Luckily mine wasn't as bad at $3000 - but be very careful travelling abroad!

I went to Germany for a weekend in July (work for an Airline, travel cheap) - anyhow - I only pulled up 1 website twice - had to check some flight info - $40!

It's insane what they are charging for roaming data. It's about $20 per mb. For those prices, it's cheaper to call and pay the .99 cents per minute.

Problem is you really need a way to turn off EDGE just like you can turn off WiFi. Every other phone I've had allows you to turn off the data portion. I don't have my e-mail pushed, I don't have it check automatically - but even if you only wanted to use it on WiFi, when you go to the web - many times it starts pulling via EDGE or it will lose the WiFi connection and start with EDGE before you can stop it.

I'm amazed that they are getting away with these rates - insane!
 
attsucks said:
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!
Click to expand...

Facts of the matter are these:

a) cell-phone roaming is _very_ expensive

b) using data-connections while roaming is outrageously expensive

c) Points A and B apply to entire world.

Easy solution: Tell your wife that "honey, next time we are on vacation, you stop working, OK?"

GPRS-connection while roaming and transferring 200MB... The idea sends shivers down my spine. And yes, I deal with these things as part of my job. Consider this a lesson learned.

Yes, harsh words. But maybe they are needed.
 
I just check my bill. ....... $ 2300.00

HOLY CRAP !!!

Ok, so I was reading the new on iphones and ran into the $ 5000.00 bill from the guy in the UK. Then I checked my bill online. Yup screwed !!
I'm in Canada, and was only supposed to be here a week or so. Prior to coming down though I tried to add the international features to my phone as I travel about 4-6 months of the year. AT&T said I was ineligible to get that feature as my account was new I had to wait 90 days. I explained to them that I live off my phone and needed the service for the discounted rates. I even told them that I would be happy to pay a $ 2000 deposit and they sould cut me off anytime if I exceeded that amount !!! (Even though I already paid $ 500 as a deposit to even activate the phone !!!) They said pretty much too bad so sad !! So a ask them excatly what my costs were going to be and how much everything was going to cost. NO MENTION OF ANYTHING WITH THE DATA PLAN !!!!
So my bill was like $ 700 in roaming usage $ 90 / month plan $ 160 in SMS (LOVE THAT !!) and $ 1200 in data usuage....

I WANT TO KILL MYSELF !!!!

I called AT&T and explained that this makes no sense. I got escalated to a great supervisor - Elma, she's putting it to international department and see if anything gets done....

PRAY FOR ME PLEASE !!!
 
Don't Expect AT&T Sympathy

From my experience AT&T is taking a hard line on any international roaming charges you rack up while abroad. I immediately opened a dispute with AT&T when we got our bill. The result of the dispute after several weeks was that the charges were considered valid by AT&T and they fully expect to be paid. In my case, I have been told that my phone will be shut off on Aug 20th if I don't pay the bill.

So my advice would be that if you feel you were mislead and want to fight this, then you should immediately file a complaint with your state attorney general's office. When I made the preliminary call to the Minnesota attorney general, the person said that they believed I had been misled and should file a formal complaint which has to be in writing. But because I waited so late, my phone will be shut off before the attorney general has a chance to even review my formal complaint.

Another word of advice is that you cannot believe a word a CSR tells you about this issue. We have gotten several different stories from different CSR's as to how international roaming works. So you should go to the website instead of talking to a CSR. I think that the fact that someone earlier was specifically told that he would NOT be charged for international data roaming in Canada confirms this. If you go to the website and look up the Canada info, it states with an exclamation point that international roaming will work even with no international roaming feature and that you will be charged.
 
How exactly did the guy at the attorney general office decide that you were misled? Did you call anyone beforehand and were given bad information or did you assume that the unlimited data for whatever price included international roaming? If we are wrong at customer service you have a valid complaint. Just remember to write down the rep's name and the date you called and make sure they notate the account exactly what that person said so if they were wrong you have some proof to back it up. Though just assuming something makes your position harder to defend. Also you may not get a manager like Elma that is willing to help you. Also don't expect the rep to magically make those charges go away, we have a limit on what we can adjust and we do get audited on our adjustments. Sometimes you may just get a rep who very rarely gives adjustments. To attsucks your complaint will most likely go to the Office of the President who will determine if those charges are valid or if they will adjust them. Then it will be up to that rep to decide what you will get.
 
Since you were roaming out of the country most likely the charges haven't appeared on our system as of yet. So there isn't much we could do until we receive those charges. Your best bet is to call CS and explain your situation to the rep and see if they can give you some kind of relief and if they have to file an HLA. You could also try having that iphone international package added and remove it at a later time. The etf on most of those international packages must be manually added, so if you get lucky the rep will forget to add the charge, but don't bank on that. I'll check on some stuff tommorrow at work about the package.
 
method525 said:
Since you were roaming out of the country most likely the charges haven't appeared on our system as of yet. So there isn't much we could do until we receive those charges. Your best bet is to call CS and explain your situation to the rep and see if they can give you some kind of relief and if they have to file an HLA. You could also try having that iphone international package added and remove it at a later time. The etf on most of those international packages must be manually added, so if you get lucky the rep will forget to add the charge, but don't bank on that. I'll check on some stuff tommorrow at work about the package.
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Ohhh good an AT&T guy is diving into the fray. I hope you brought a helmet, method, because $2000+ tends to get Mac users pretty pissed off. Then they'll complain to Steve, and Steve will complain to whatever clown runs that piss-poor excuse for a corporation that is AT&T...mmm God I love corporate showdowns.

Melodrama? Me? Never?

Sorry, really weird mood tonight...
 
I cannot believe ppl here are actually surprised. I've never heard of international roaming being included in any data/voice plan. Also roaming in Canada is enabled by default by all U.S. carriers, and the story is the same in Canada too. Canadian providers require their customers to turn on international roaming when going abroad, except when travelling to the U.S.
 
StealthRider said:
Ohhh good an AT&T guy is diving into the fray. I hope you brought a helmet, method, because $2000+ tends to get Mac users pretty pissed off. Then they'll complain to Steve, and Steve will complain to whatever clown runs that piss-poor excuse for a corporation that is AT&T...mmm God I love corporate showdowns.

Melodrama? Me? Never?

Sorry, really weird mood tonight...
Click to expand...

$2000 is a lot of money, yes. But understand the fact that roaming is expensive, and data-roaming is order of magnitude more expensive. This isn't about AT&T screwing you guys over, this is just the way it is. It's expensive no matter what operator you are on.

No, I don't work for a telco.
 
Evangelion said:
$2000 is a lot of money, yes. But understand the fact that roaming is expensive, and data-roaming is order of magnitude more expensive. This isn't about AT&T screwing you guys over, this is just the way it is. It's expensive no matter what operator you are on.

No, I don't work for a telco.
Click to expand...

if data is so expensive (I don't see why, it can terminate locally) then please explain the 20/month intl blackberry data plan that att has.

The data roaming fees are predatory and not reasonable. Way to protect your customers.
 
ryanobjc said:
if data is so expensive (I don't see why, it can terminate locally) then please explain the 20/month intl blackberry data plan that att has.

The data roaming fees are predatory and not reasonable. Way to protect your customers.
Click to expand...

If Blackberry works even in a remotely similar way as our push-email does (and I believe it does), then the answer is simple: it doesn't transmit that much data. We have phone-based push-email and it doesn't cost us much, since it eats just few kilobytes of data every now and then.
 
tipdrill407 said:
I cannot believe ppl here are actually surprised. I've never heard of international roaming being included in any data/voice plan. Also roaming in Canada is enabled by default by all U.S. carriers, and the story is the same in Canada too. Canadian providers require their customers to turn on international roaming when going abroad, except when travelling to the U.S.
Click to expand...

Just my 2 cents - I agree that I've never heard of a plan that includes international roaming data/voice - I don't really think that the whole point though - it's the price. It does seem predatory and tied to an outdated model.

Voice is expensive too when roaming - usually .99 to 1.29 per minute - and can result in some high bills - but nothing bank busting like these data charges of $2000 to $3000 and up.

Imagine the outcry if voice calls were $10 to $20 per minute.

"Oh sure, you can call International - it runs 20 cents per second, enjoy your trip."

It's not that there shouldn't be a charge and I think everyone understands that it wouldn't be included - but it shouldn't bankrupt you either - that's the point.
 
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