How to Run Up a $200,000 Cell Phone Bill

If they sent him text messages and let him know and he kept doing it then he needs to foot the bill plain and simple...
 
Reminds of the idiot parents who buy their children contract phones and then the kids run up thousands of dollars in overages.
 
i love roaming charges. It really doesn't cost anymore then a normal cell phone usage. Gotta love the little contracts between different providers in different countries huh?
 
hesho said:
i love roaming charges. It really doesn't cost anymore then a normal cell phone usage. Gotta love the little contracts between different providers in different countries huh?
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hey even crossing the panama canal costs $1,300-$331,000
 
Batjew said:
I always understood those charges are high because of the overhead in using someone else's network, transmitting data/voice, overhead etc.
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Sure there is undoubtablly some extra cost.

hey, if it costs $100 to call you from Mt. Everest, I'll pay.
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Sure there are some roaming situaitons where very high fees are justifiable such as roaming onto a satphone network.

so how is it highway robbery?
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When the rates charged to those who roam without setting up a special plan are orders of magnitude higher than that charged to either locals or roamers with a special plan and where roaming happens without getting the users explicit agreement then that is exploitative behaviour.
 
plugwash said:
When the rates charged to those who roam without setting up a special plan are orders of magnitude higher than that charged to either locals or roamers with a special plan and where roaming happens without getting the users explicit agreement then that is exploitative behaviour.
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and to me, it goes back to being the end-user's part to inform the carrier "hey I'm leaving the country" most often the carrier will inform you "hey here are the costs". even the contract you sign has information about international travel. Even my carrier states to contact them 24 hrs before leaving the country if I intended to take my phone with me.
 
amdgamer said:
That is the problem these days, as personal responsibility has been completely thrown out the window. T-Mobile shouldn't have even had to reduce the bill since they repeatedly warned their customer, but of course that would have been disastrous PR. No wonder modern civilisation is on the decline when people always blame others for their problems and refuse to take responsibility.
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I agree to a point.

Allowing a cell bill to get to $200k (or even $2500) doesn't pass the smell test especially when their average before then wouldn't have even been within an order of magnitude of that. Companies, that haven't sold their soul to devil yet do provide their cusotmer with some level of protection/courtesy. For example, USCC will cut you off when they feel it has gone stupid and minimize your damages to ~$75 over with their forgiveness policy.

Personally, I would like you to point me to one case where somebody got a $2500 cellphone bill that they were "expecting". If you can't do that, your arugment has diminished merit.
 
Trepidati0n said:
Personally, I would like you to point me to one case where somebody got a $2500 cellphone bill that they were "expecting". If you can't do that, your arugment has diminished merit.
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does a company count?, we have a lot of users who travel internationally.
 
Batjew said:
because it's still your responsibility to know this crap. I work in IT and I'm all about helping and teaching people, but there's a line. there's a contract YOU as the end user sign and should read (which people never do) and the the reason they leave data access on (unless you request to block it) is convenience, again, they assume you know what you're doing. If you don't, you probably should own or use that device. why do I have a smartphone, I use all those features and I'm aware of my presence (digital or physical) and how that affects things. The cellphone company is not your babysitter, they don't hold your hand and neither do I. common sense. But with the exponential rise of data usage in an ever-connected world, eventually the companies will have to transform to handle these things without being a financial burden, on the company or the end-user.
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These frigging EULAs everyone makes you sign are ridiculous. Who is going to read 100 pages of legal jargon to install some application?

It should be a requirement to make these things in plain English and have them be a maximum of 5 pages of readable text.
 
jhokie said:
These frigging EULAs everyone makes you sign are ridiculous. Who is going to read 100 pages of legal jargon to install some application?

It should be a requirement to make these things in plain English and have them be a maximum of 5 pages of readable text.
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plain English doesn't always hold in court (the term vague comes to mind). I'll admit I don't read the entire document, I DO scan and if something catches my eye(yes even 100 pages), I'll at least ask. but I usually sign something expecting the worst but that's the cost of doing business.
 
ekuest said:
please link me. cheapest i could find is my 1500 minutes/texts combined on tmobile. i couldnt find ANY plan on ANY carrier that was less than this $30 plan i have. actually rereading it maybe you mean $20 in addition to your regular plan. still, if there is a $20 plan lmk. :)
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I pay $25/month for 4 phones , shared 750 minutes+texts.
 
I travel a lot for work. The plane lands. I turn on my phone. I get a text telling me what it will cost to use my phone in that country. How are people still doing this? Shit, we've heard the same story a couple of times a year, for the last several years...

At some point it became basic common knowledge. How self absorbed can people be? How far are their heads lodged up their colons?

And yeah, the phone companies for their own protection should set auto cut offs. I dunno, 300% of your bill unless you text them back a specific code or something...
 
bigpimpatl said:
the guy was DEAF for crying out loud. If texting is his only method of communication then I can completely understand how the text messages sent by tmobile could be missed.
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Well one could argue that with text being his only way to communicate that it would be reasonable to assume he would pay closer attention to his texts then most people.

amdgamer said:
That is the problem these days, as personal responsibility has been completely thrown out the window. T-Mobile shouldn't have even had to reduce the bill since they repeatedly warned their customer, but of course that would have been disastrous PR. No wonder modern civilisation is on the decline when people always blame others for their problems and refuse to take responsibility.
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QFT

Stone Cold said:
Reminds of the idiot parents who buy their children contract phones and then the kids run up thousands of dollars in overages.
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Funny story, back in the stone ages before cellphones you could basically get a calling card number which would allow you, or someone else, to make calls from anywhere in the world and have it automatically charged to your home phone.

Well when I was in the Army a guy going through basic training in my unit sold his ID number to a few people for $20 each, the idea being they would use it to make a few calls and he got drinking money for the weekend.

Well do you see where this is headed yet? Remember the shampoo commercial with "and she told to friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so one......?"

Well after graduation the parents went out of the country for an extended period of time and came back to find a phone bill for $45,000 (and this was back in 1983 or 1984.) I remember seeing the story on the network news while home on leave. The phone company was actually calling around to numbers that were called repeatedly and asked who was calling them from X base, but of course by that time there were calls placed from Europe to Japan and everywhere in between.

I don't know if the bill was ever paid but I do know that the final ruling from the company was that the authorized user of the card had sold the rights to it to others and thus they were responsible for the bill.

Trepidati0n said:
I agree to a point.

Allowing a cell bill to get to $200k (or even $2500) doesn't pass the smell test especially when their average before then wouldn't have even been within an order of magnitude of that. Companies, that haven't sold their soul to devil yet do provide their cusotmer with some level of protection/courtesy. For example, USCC will cut you off when they feel it has gone stupid and minimize your damages to ~$75 over with their forgiveness policy.

Personally, I would like you to point me to one case where somebody got a $2500 cellphone bill that they were "expecting". If you can't do that, your arugment has diminished merit.
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Well my average CC bill is less then a couple hundred dollars a month, so if I spend $15k next month can I then refuse to pay it based on the fact that it greatly exceeding my prior average usage and the CC company shouldn't have allowed the charges?
 
How do you not sue for extortion at that point? Jesus fuck some companies are so greedy.
 
I have T-Mobile, and when I traveled out of the country I checked the web site & activated their International roaming plan (it's a free add-on). The reason it's not on by default is that you need credit approval for the possibly higher charges. I kept the phone off and ended up only using it where I had WiFi access, so had no roaming charges.

If he had signed up for the T-Mobile International roaming plan, his bill would likely have been much closer to the $2500 charge since the base data roaming cost in Canada is $10/MB.
 
Ironically, pries are usually pretty high in Canada regardless when it comes to cellphones. Were still paying $60-80+ for unlimited data/text/voice plans a month from Telus/Rogers. There's a few other carriers showing up now like Kodo mobile; albiet owned by Telus and a Roger's "sub-coporation" to make it appear like Canadians have "choice" in who we use for our cellphone provider.
 
There should be a law that residential cell phone bills can't exceed $250/device or something without contacting the user directly to continue more charges.

Seriously, we're talking about a cell phone bill that is 1/5 million bucks!
 
Hello? Canada is a foreign country with rapacous cell phone charges. Bell/Rogers/Telus charge me $40 for 100 minutes of airtime when I travel to the US. Is it any wonder they charge similar rates or higher to Americans travelling in Canada? Welcome to the real world, where there is no such thing as a free lunch.
 
I had Verizon do something similar to this. I got my daughter a Blackberry and when I got it setup with V I thought everything was fine. Come to find out she didn't have unlimited data which the V dude never said anything about when I talked to him. How am I suppose to know you need unlimited texting, data, bla bla bla. They did forgive about $3000, but it ended up costing us $1200 *&^% dollars. I hate Verizon.
 
So you didn't reas your contract and believed a salesman? Fail on your part.

Just like fail on the part of the guy in the original story. They tell you when you cross the border, they tell you as you rack up data charges. Yes, the rates are usurous BUT THEY TELL YOU THAT UP FRONT AND OVER AND OVER AS YOU ARE RACKING UP THE CHARGES. When I go into canada for more than a day or so, I add a monthly international plan rider for that month. Works like a charm (verizon).

Personal responsibility fail on this one. T-mobile had no choice due to the PR, but they didn't have to.

The idea of a cutoff at 3 or 4 times your normal bill unless you give explicit authorization is a good idea. Though I'm sure we'd hear about some other idiot complaining he didn't understand even with that idea....

BB
 
I had a bad dream about this happening to me a couple of weeks ago. In the dream was in Japan doing all of the above and using google maps to navigate around Tokyo when I finally realized, OH CRAP! I didn't switch over my plan before leaving! But after crunching the numbers it only came out to 450 bucks. lol =)
 
In the history of cell phones has there ever been a breakdown of the roaming process to explain why it costs so many orders of magnitude more than regular voice/data?
I mean.. Is there some massive administrative overhead in reporting usage from an international provider back to the home provider? Do they have to chisel it out on tablets and have it flown by private jet?

Sane roaming data would enable the world smartphones to really shine! Ex. GPS/Google Maps could/should be a fantastic utility in simplifying the stress of travel. Make the blue dot get to the red dot & enjoy your destination. -> Never truly be "lost". <-
We have all these apps for location discovery (food, places of interest, etc..) but we can't use them when we're really out of our element and could use them most. Sane world data is really the next logical step in what's already started, IMO.
 
It's just another network like any other. There is no way they are providing $4200 worth of real service, much less $200,000. It's hard to believe posters stick up for the obviously ridiculous billing practices of the industry. There's someone I'd never want to do business with.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Well my average CC bill is less then a couple hundred dollars a month, so if I spend $15k next month can I then refuse to pay it based on the fact that it greatly exceeding my prior average usage and the CC company shouldn't have allowed the charges?
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Do you have a credit card? Soon as I deviate from my norm on my CC, they are calling me and going WTF?!? If I charge outside of country and they didn't know I was travelling, they go WTF?!? If I make a large purchase my phone is ringing within 30 seconds with an automated message asking me to confirm it.

Furthermore, your analogy is pointless since when you swipe your damn card, you sign a slip saying how much you spent for each transaction. If the phone said "If you download this movie, it will cost your $10,000, please press yes to accept"...I would give you a point. However, it doesn't. Cedit cards also have limits based upon history and rating. The average person doesnot have a CC with a $200k limit.

Your comments to pass the smell test on any reasonable level.
 
last weekend i was near canada, but still in the US.
my phone apparently connected to a canadian cell tower.
i got a text message from verizon saying that i was roaming and charges would apply.
they never said how to turn off roaming.
 
ripken204 said:
last weekend i was near canada, but still in the US.
my phone apparently connected to a canadian cell tower.
i got a text message from verizon saying that i was roaming and charges would apply.
they never said how to turn off roaming.
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I worked at VZW at a call center for a while. All of their phones have an option for either "Home" or "Automatic", where the former will only connect to Verizon towers, and the latter will connect to any tower that's available, whether roaming in the U.S or outside the country.
You can either check your manual or call a rep who can check their intranet to find that option for your phone model quickly.
 
Cell phone companies are crooked. Think about it, how is the infrastructure for cell phones expensive compared to land lines? It isn't, it is far less expensive to operate over the air than cables and yet they charge at a rate 25 to 45 cents per minute just for local calls. Land lines charge just 4 cents a minute or less for long distance. Fucking crooks.
 
nerdydesi said:
I worked at VZW at a call center for a while. All of their phones have an option for either "Home" or "Automatic", where the former will only connect to Verizon towers, and the latter will connect to any tower that's available, whether roaming in the U.S or outside the country.
You can either check your manual or call a rep who can check their intranet to find that option for your phone model quickly.
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my issue is that not once is the customer told how to disable this.
and i was only notified by a text message, if i didnt check my texts i would have no idea i was roaming. there should be a pop up window warning you.

i just found that option on my phone, i had no idea what that even meant before.
thanks for making that clear
 
ripken204 said:
my issue is that not once is the customer told how to disable this.
and i was only notified by a text message, if i didnt check my texts i would have no idea i was roaming. there should be a pop up window warning you.
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I agree with you. At one of my last training sessions at the company, they told us they want to reduce the call-in rate as much as possible by providing customers "education" about their products and services. They encourage customers to check their account online instead of calling in to check their balance, upgrade eligibility date, etc, for example.

So, if they would send messages once you are abroad about your roaming rates and how to turn it off if they wish, that would prevent calls into customer service about insanely high bills, etc.
 
Gnasher said:
Cell phone companies are crooked. Think about it, how is the infrastructure for cell phones expensive compared to land lines? It isn't, it is far less expensive to operate over the air than cables and yet they charge at a rate 25 to 45 cents per minute just for local calls. Land lines charge just 4 cents a minute or less for long distance. Fucking crooks.
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you think they work by fucking magic? Most towers are fed by T1s, which aren't cheap. want to say that a lot of towers around me are maxed out at 32 T1s going to them. So you have the cost of all of those. Then all the actual equipment there and power. That is just getting the signal from local phone company to the cell phones. you then need to add all the connections from the cell phone carriers to the local phone companies. 4G and 3G in some areas is feed by 1Gbps fiber but that still isn't dirt cheap or free.
 
You should have the option of how you want to handle overages when you sign your initial contract.
Would you prefer to be charged overages piecemeal, be bumped up to the next plan tier, or have data use suspended temporarily?

Make it something you have to select, like was done with opt-in only overdrafts.
 
I would love to know what the actual cost to the phone company was for that "data" being that text, voice, internet, is all digital data anyway. Basically we pay the phone company for the wireless equivelant of our home internet svc. But it cost more for less. ($80 for a month of wireless dsl that you cant hook up to anything else unless you pay even more)

What really burns me is how the phone companys require you to pay for data plan on a phone. I say I dont need data plan, this phone has wifi. They say you have to have it no matter. What kind of shit is that. To this day I am not sure how i got my samsung mythic without a data plan.
 
I'm sorry but there should be an automatic cutoff to protect anyone not on Fobres top 100. When a bill reaches the amount of a new car, something should have gone "DING!" and shut their service off until they could be contacted.

There is no way the bill should habe been allowed to reach the 5-digit mark for a single month without the person actually speaking with a freaking person and saying "Please keep my service running while I indebt myself to you for the next 10 years."
 
my cell provider cuts me off once i reach $100 in a month, regardless of how i get there, calls data etc. i can call them to get this limit raised or removed. it also counts for roaming charges. its awesome.
i never use more than $5 or 10 a month anyway.
 
The only problem with them cutting you off is that you are choosing to make the choices that result in such. Everyone wants their responsibility to fall to someone else. Why should I watch my spending my card company or phone company shouldn't let me spend a lot. Why should I make my kids do homework and study for test, school should do that. Why should I make my kids eat right, government should outlaw kid meals and for everyone to make better meals. Why should I pay attention when driving through intersection, states and cities should fix intersections to make them safer to blow through red lights. Why should I keep my meds and poison out of the reach of kids companies should make them child proof....

I don't care what the excuse is, YOU pick to have a phone, you pick to have all the extra features such as text and data. You should know your rates and areas to use the phone. If you are to stupid to under the types of charges then you shouldn't have a phone.
 
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