How To Rack Up $28,000 In Roaming Without Leaving the US 410
pmbasehore writes "While waiting for his cruise ship to depart, a man decided to use his AT&T wireless card and Slingbox account to watch the Bears vs. Lions football game. When he got his bill, he was slammed with $28,067.31 in 'International Roaming' charges, even though he never left American soil. The bill was finally dropped to $290.65, but only after the media got involved." He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Informative)
You have to dig pretty deep for this to actually be specified, but he was docked at Miami, before the ship ever left port.
The cock-up was that the ship had already turned on their satellite-based cell network, even though they shouldn't have, which resulted in the guy's phone connecting to the Ship's netwrok & being billed at international rates.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Informative)
It's likely that he wasn't roaming because he was already registered through the telco relay on the ship, which charges at international rates, despite being within spitting distance of the shore.
The real problem is that he was able to register to the international point before the ship had left port. I wonder how many other people get ripped off by making calls in that area while that ship is in port?
I think he should take it to court...
This is strange (Score:3, Informative)
http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-insider5nov05 [latimes.com]
I know this article is a bit old and this might have changed already.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
Obviously something went wrong here and different carriers may have different abilities. This is just my personal experience.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Informative)
As I suspected, TFA says he was connected to the ship's cell network, which should not have been operational while it was docked.
So it's not just me having horrible experiences with AT&T, then. I tried to get DSL service from them last year. After four technician visits, I had service for two full days before it stopped working. I canceled service and returned the equipment in their postage-paid box, and they sent me a $70 bill. I called to complain, and told them I was willing to pay for the two days I had service, and nothing more. They told me they'd look into it, but they had no way of sending me a corrected bill. I did not pay them a penny, and I have not heard from them again.
We also had phone service with them for a bit. When I set it up, I specifically asked for unlimited calling to Canada, and was assured it was on the plan. I called back again for another reason, and was again assured that I had unlimited calling to Canada. Next month's bill? $1200. They had not added unlimited calling to Canada. It took me about a half-dozen calls to sort it out, during which time I was told that it was impossible for me to talk to anyone who was capable of modifying my bill, because "they don't have phone numbers."
I recently had to deal with AT&T Wireless, and was asked to verify my identity. I provided my information, and they told me it was incorrect. I told them they were incorrect. After about two hours of phone calls, it turns out they were using a default value for the information they asked for. When I provided the actual value, they looked at the default, and said that I was wrong. Apparently they could not figure out that "9999" was probably not the actual last 4 digits of anyone's SSN.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Informative)
This is completely ridiculous. Customers should be able to set a bill cap to prevent this kind of thing. If you hit the cap, your access gets cut unless you explicitly give permission to charge more. That's why I use a prepaid phone (I live in Germany, so it's dirt cheap here).
Such a cap wouldn't really help you with situations like these. When you roam on another provider that provider doesn't send your call details back to your home provider in real time. They typically collect a few days worth of calls and then upload them to your home provider. There's no way for your home provider to have a real time accounting of the calls that you make while roaming.
Re:Why he is not legally obligated to pay (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Happens all the time. (Score:1, Informative)
You can always configure your phone to never roam. All the phones I've ever had have had this feature. This will force the phone to try to find a non-roam tower, even if it's low signal.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
Since we're sharing horror stories...
I called AT&T for a DSL line to a facility our company was building. Easy enough, they scheduled a date for install, and I informed my boss that the line was coming on that date. After about 5 visits from AT&T and a month later than the install date, they decided that our building was too far for DSL service, and that we were still going to pay them for a phone line we had installed specifically for the DSL service. Imagine how great I looked to the boss trying to play middleman to the f-up's at AT&T.
As a side note, I dealt with the same crap you did... nobody at AT&T knows who to send you to, has no idea what their sibling departments are called, what their phone numbers are, and none of them share any customer information between them... so you get to explain your situation to about 12 different departments every time you call.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, according to the article, AT&T was sending him repeated SMS warnings but he did not get them because it was a data card, not a phone. That means to me that they did know what was going on and a cap could be implemented.
Re:I recently was on a cruise (Score:2, Informative)
Not true. I was on a cruise ship last June and my ATT phone showed I was on another network. Do not remember exactly what it said, something like "sea cell" or some such.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:2, Informative)
"..and have not heard from them again."
Have you checked your credit report lately? I disputed an over-billing error with AT&T and thought it was resolved when they finally admitted the mistake and supposedly deleted the charge (I had also closed my account over the issue due to sucky customer service). Two years later the charge showed up on my credit reports as delinquent.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
This is why you should always record your phone calls when you call a call center.
Absolutely. They almost always give you explicit permission to do so: "this call may be recorded for quality assurance." Thanks! I might just do that!
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
In Canada we were driving along the highway near the US border and my sisters phone connected to an American Tower. It's a pretty new Motorola so I have to assume that many cell phones sill do just pick the strongest signal.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:2, Informative)
This can occur here in Erie. It use to be a somewhat common occurance that someone's Cell One Dobson phone would connect to a Rogers tower across the lake. In every instance I know of a phone call and some bitching to Dobson got the charges fully removed.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
The FA is rather skimpy on details, but it says he was on board the ship, and it is logical to assume he wasn't sitting on deck running his laptop. It is very likely that he had no shore-based reception, so the on-board cell was all there was.
About his "never leaving the US" claims. Well, he was on-board the ship. That means he had passed through immigration going out, and was on a ship that was almost certainly of a foreign registry. While he was still in US territorial waters, he was, for all practical purposes, out of the US. He would have had to clear immigration and customs to get back in.
But yeah, as someone who got hit with a stupidly large bill for "international roaming"*, I agree with the concept of an account "cap", but it appears from the FA that AT&T was trying to warn him and his equipment wasn't passing the message on.
* hundreds of calls being forwarded to Australia while I was there, not being answered because the phone was turned off, and then being forwarded back to the US for voicemail -- that didn't record a single one. With a one-minute charge going both ways.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
In the Network options (on CDMA phones, so YMMV on GSM) select Home Only and you will never roam. If you want to roam, go in the settings and turn it back to Automatic.
Fairly easy solution to that issue.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
For future reference, "kha-ka" is spelled "caca" and it's a deformation of the Mexican Spanish "cuacha," meaning "shit."
Unless, of course, you meant cockeyed [thefreedictionary.com], which should be clear on its face that it means "cross-eyed."
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Informative)
There is no similar option to restrict voice roaming, but that's likely not nearly as hazardous to your wallet.
Tower on the Ship (Score:1, Informative)
To me the most likely explanation is that the ship it's self had its own AT&T antennas with an uplink so that no matter how far off the coast the ship was you could use your cell or broadband card. Since he was on the ship, he connected to the shipped based system and either the system isn't smart enough to know where it actually is physically located for billing purposes or was malfunctioning and thought they where out to see or in another country.
In building towers and repeaters are nothing new, I had perfect signal in Boston last week when I was in a tunnel underwater. Just proves they will build out anywhere, anywhere that it will make them lots of money or someplace where there is lots of traffic, and international roaming is one of those places.