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 $290.65, but only after the media got involved." He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
Still 290$? (Score:5, Insightful)
The correct answer is ZERO. He was not roaming and there should be no additional charges, other than his monthly access fee.
Even if his usage exceeded what is acceptable for AT&T, there is no provision in the contracts that allow them to assess that kind of penalty.
I would fight it still.
Not news. Doesn't matter. (Score:0, Insightful)
This is fitting for The Consumerist, not Slashdot.
Sure, we nerds like fancy cellular internet connections and, as people, hate to see something like this happen, but it really doesn't belong here.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. It's not a grand conspiracy. It's just technology going "a little kha-ka" and the customer having to pay the bill, because a poor design caused him to connect to the international cell tower instead of the local U.S.-based tower.
That's the unfair part. The customer has to pay for somebody else's technological error. If I was the customer, I'd say "fuck you" and refuse to pay.
Color me paranoid (Score:3, Insightful)
But I think the major cellphone providers do this on purpose.
How many of their users would WANT to be able to rack up more than $100 at a single time?
But they give them the opportunity to charge tens of thousands of dollars with one usage.
Logically, they should put a cap on one use, and have the user call and explicity request the cap be removed on a case by case basis, except for super huge millionaires, CEO's, ETC.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Contract Scmontract. (Score:4, Insightful)
The wireless provider obviously needs to do something about how much credit they issue people. Nobody is going to pay a $28,000 bill for cell phone usage.
There's a certain segment of people around here that like to play up "personal responsibility". What they often fail to address is the responsibility works both ways. Letting someone rack up a bill on the order of 1000x normal is utterly irresponsible of the provider.
Re:I recently was on a cruise (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as I hate AT&T, this just isn't their fault this time.
Actually it is their fault. AT&T disables the ability of their phones to display a proper roaming banner. Regardless of which network you are on your phone will always say "AT&T". On the other hand, T-Mobile will show the name of the actual network you are connected to, i.e: "T-Mobile", "AT&T", "Cellular One", etc, etc. Given that AT&T removes your ability to know when your phone is roaming I would say that it's very much their fault when people rack up roaming charges by accident.
Re:I recently was on a cruise (Score:5, Insightful)
This is ATT's fault. Pure and simple. Unless somebody puts it in writing that they want to be able to spend $30k in international roaming, then they shouldn't be able to charge it. That is an amazingly outrageous sum. And then bargaining it down to $6000 is even worse - at least the initial $30k bill was automated, but the $6000 bill was deliberately offered by a human being.
It seems like the cell phone company MO is to trick their consumer into amazingly high bills, and then offering them ten cents on a dollar, accepting only a 5,000% markup instead of a 50,000% markup.
By law consumers should have the right to limit their monthly bills. If a provider delivers more service than a consumer budgeted for then the bill is on them.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Insightful)
What determines if one is roaming is the tower to which one is connected.
The ship has it's own cellular tower. His phone was connected to that tower. He was roaming.
If the roaming agreement between the operator of the cruise ship's service and his home service has the ships as being "international" roaming, then it doesn't matter where the ship is.
Re:I recently was on a cruise (Score:1, Insightful)
As much as I hate AT&T, this just isn't their fault this time.
Actually it is their fault. AT&T disables the ability of their phones to display a proper roaming banner. Regardless of which network you are on your phone will always say "AT&T". On the other hand, T-Mobile will show the name of the actual network you are connected to, i.e: "T-Mobile", "AT&T", "Cellular One", etc, etc. Given that AT&T removes your ability to know when your phone is roaming I would say that it's very much their fault when people rack up roaming charges by accident.
How would this work if he was using a data card?
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>The only real WTF was that the ship turned on their "tower" before it left port
I would agree with you, but the same design flaw exists near the Canadian border. You can be on U.S. soil, and yet still be charged international rates because your dumb phone connected to a Canadian tower. That's a technological flaw, and the customer should not have to pay the price for the mistake.
Re:Why he is not legally obligated to pay (Score:3, Insightful)
Your trip through the quantity of data is completely unnecessary. Since it's streaming video, if you figure the game took around 3 hours, divide the total bill by 180 minutes -- giving you about $155/min.
Re:Contract Scmontract. (Score:2, Insightful)
This is not about responsibility. It's about the phone company's self-interest. It is in the self-interest of the phone company to make it impossible for people to inadvertently rack up big bills that they cannot possibly pay.
If today I incur the expenses to provide you a service, and then bill you for it at the end of the month, what I'm doing is in an important regard equivalent to extending you short-term credit. It is absolutely in my interest to only extend such implicit credit when I can be reasonably sure I will be paid. Therefore, I should not allow people to rack up $28,000 bills unless I am reasonably sure that they will indeed pay them up.
There are several problems in this one specific case:
A superior system would require the phone to query the current network for its billing rates, to be aware of the user's usual rates, and intelligently notify the user before they attempt to place calls that would incur in higher than normal charges. The notification should spell out as clearly and concretely as possible how large the charges could be--e.g., "A 10 minute phone call at this rate would cost $1,234.56," or "displaying a typical newspaper web page would cost $5 at this rate."
Please allow me to stress the following point again: this is all in the interest of the provider.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:2, Insightful)
No service I have used charges for system messages. Are you certain AT&T does, or are you bellyaching?
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:1, Insightful)
Operating a tower, satellite uplink, etc in {country}'s territory requires a valid license from that country. In this case the ship would require licenses for the FCC. Does the ship have valid FCC licenses?
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Insightful)
AT&T does not charge for messages from them. I've had AT&T/Cingular for a decade, and not once have they charged me for that kind of thing. And I didn't have unlimited texting until a few months ago.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think he should take it to court...
Yes. He should. But he should have accepted the bill from his phone company first, then sued the international-carrier operator for hijacking his signal.
He could have got triple damages out of it, putting him somewhere like up $100K, instead of down $300.
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Or B), the user didn't understand how to check to see which network his wireless broadband card was using. .... If it's B, he has no one to blame but himself.
Except that he is sitting in the middle of Miami, Florida - USA. It is not like the dock is even at the edge of the ocean, the port of Miami is probably 2 miles inland - all of Miami Beach and South Beach is between you and the ocean - dozens of high rise buildings obscure your view of the ocean. I cannot imagine anyone who had not heard this story or some similar anecdote deciding to check which international network he was using at that moment. The nearest international network should be somewhere in the Bahamas, probably close to 100 miles away.
Re:Still 290$? (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to be supporting a position that AT&T was not entirely at fault here and that blindly using this as an opportunity to bash AT&T is unjust. I agree with you, and I also agree that AT&T was not at fault for creating the condition of roaming. However, AT&T was at fault for their actions subsequent to the "event". That is where people can rightly make negative comments about AT&T.
Yes. They Can. I hereby summon the dark spirits of GPS! Bwahahaha! Seriously. It's trivial for carriers to determine the position of cell phones and data cards today with built-in GPS. In fact, it's the only technical solution to the requirements created by the E911 rules that gradually affecting cell phone carriers in the U.S. Those cruise ships have excellent GPS systems. They have to for navigation. For the international carrier to have GPS data available to them remotely is a TRIVIAL ISSUE. Don't make it out like it is an insurmountable task that requires something akin to magic.
So we have established that you believe the cruise ship does have the responsibility to use the equipment correctly in accordance with contracts and laws? Good.
So we have also established that you believe that at the time of the incident that AT&T did not possess any information that allowed them to protect their own customers? Excellent. I take it by your usage of the word "hijacked" that you believe the customer also had no way of knowing that they were roaming? Getting there.
So assuming that the international carrier had no way of "magically" knowing the ship was improperly carrying the "call" it was not their fault either? Good. More progress.
Now here is where you are dead wrong. The customer is the last person in the transaction with the least amount of information. They are not liable for bills that are improperly presented to them. It is not his responsibility to pay the bill and then use his own resources to pursue others for damages.
The order of responsibility here is clear, and your own statements support it.
A bill has to be correct in order for it to be justly paid. If I hand you a bill as a contractor that had it services provided through a chain of five different subcontractors, you are not obligated to pay ME so that I can pay THEM if there was a problem with the services and you were not aware these charges were going to take place.
* The cruise line should have never allowed the connection and were most likely in breach of contract.
* The international carrier was not allowed to bill AT&T for connections that were created out of negligence and also most likely in breach of contract. Sending the bill was improper at this point.
* AT&T, once aware that the charges were improperly c
Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I personally think it is a design flaw not to have a system for warning users that they are about to inadvertantly do something so expensive only the very desperate, stupid or rich would want to do it.
Unfortunately noone in the mobile cartel wants to do anything about it because they are the ones that stand to profit from it.