Airdrie Man "shocked" by $8000 phone bill

[hkstylez]

Maybe he should ask to borrow money from the guy who's won 7 times in the lottery to pay his 8 Grand phone bill.

[mac_gurl]

My husband got an iphone last week. He called telus, got on a data plan, and they sent him the phone the next day. After activating it and playing with it for MAYBE 2 hours, he received a text that he had spent over $50 on data. Turns out, they never activated the data plan, and he was charged $91 ($30/mb!!!!). Luckily, they reversed the charges. It is ridiculous the amount they think they can charge for this stuff!

[photon]

They can charge whatever they want for a service, there was a time that $30 for a MB was a decent deal!

However I agree with Agamemnon, they should have a simple limit in place, once you hit a specified amount it disables your service or at least warns you, set to $100 by default.

Easy, no more cases like this. However they probably won't do that because they would lose the $$ they get from smaller cases of this (cases where it's $250 and doesn't make the news).

[CaptainCrunch]

I'm tempted to buy a car from him then complain to the press about him because he didn't explain the contract that I'd signed when I bought the car from him.

[Pinner]

You need a holiday Capitan,

[Maritime Q-Scout]

“They pulled the plug on me after the third day,” he said, adding he figured it was related to roaming charges of some sort, though he never would have imagined he’d open such a humongous bill weeks later.

So he was aware that roaming charges existed, yet didn't ask Virgin Mobile about them, only if his iPhone would work?

There are explanations for his stupidity, let's say he thought the iPhone was using wifi to stream his data, or he was told there was a spending cap on his bill. Both situations would explain why he did what he did, or why he's shocked at his bill statement. However both should have come up in the article.

If you're a car salesman you're aware of how contracts work, also cell phone contracts have you initial next to fine print charges, it's not like they're buried in 3pt font, you have to initial that you read and understood them (now if you don't read or understand them, why are you initialling them? Seriously why?)

I know lots of people don't read or understand their contracts. Hands up the people that know the Master Card or Visa with their name on it isn't theirs but actually property of the credit card company and is not usable unless signed?

Should the company give him a break?

While he probably initialled that he understands there are charges to leave the country (I'm assuming I haven't seen a Virgin contract) it wouldn't say what the charges are. Is $7500 (the bill is $77xx less $200 average bill) for 130mb/int'l txt & talk, unreasonable and unexpected? There's where his case lies.

I'd say it is and he should get a reduction to something more reasonable. What's reasonable? More than the $200 for the international roaming, there's a reason why you get that option. Consumer responsibility does have to kick in, so five times the responsible consumer sound fair? $1000 for the charges (provided that does cover Virgin Canada's costs which I'm assuming it would). However 37.5 times more than the responsible consumer that did their due diligence? That might be a bit much.




Looking on Virgin's website they have the cost to use the phone to talk in France but I don't see anything about data usage. If it's not on the website, doing due diligence would be more difficult.

[Jimmy Stang]

I'm not trying to make an excuse for the guy (as I posted earlier, that's not the case).

But... when will the wireless companies start charging a reasonable price for voice and data while abroad? If the rates were more competitive, it could result in more profit by collecting a little extra from many subscribers instead of collecting a lot from a few outliers like this guy.

I'd use my phone (and do a little browsing) while abroad if it was going to cost me a little extra. Instead, I ensure that I don't use any data or voice and will seek out wifi, pay for internet hotspots, use Skype, use calling cards, etc. all because I don't want to give the phone company a cent for the outrageous rates.

[corporatejay]

When I went to Europe I pulled my SIM card out because I didn't want to incur heavy data roaming fees by accident.

[Northendzone]

it would sure be interesting to know what a french tourist streaming a few hours of his favourite parisian radio station while visitng Bannf would cost him?

[fredr123]

Originally Posted by troutman

When you get a mortgage you have to sign a Disclosure Statement, confirming you understand how much interest you are paying.

If tel/com companies want to charge heavy roaming fees, I don't think it should be buried in the fine print. Customers should have to sign-off on some kind of disclosure statement where everything is spelled-out clearly.

That's a great idea, actually.

The Disclosure Statement and all the other required documentation came about as a result of regulations under the Fair Trading Act (Cost of Credit Disclosure Regulations). There are other good regulations in there too about time shares, gift cards, car sales and door to door marketing. It couldn't be that difficult to add a further regulation regarding the true cost of cellular telephone charges.

Our office recently renegotiated all of the cellular telephone and blackberry service contracts we have with Telus. All of the various plans and options were daunting to sort through. And then to ensure we would not get hosed over when our lawyers were traveling all over North America (and sometimes overseas)? Ugh.

[Locke]

Originally Posted by corporatejay

When I went to Europe I pulled my SIM card out because I didn't want to incur heavy data roaming fees by accident.

When I went to Europe I bought a 30 Euro pay as you go POS phone just in case, and I paid a couple Euro an hour to send my family/friends my new temporary phone number via email.

Convenience can incur a heavy cost. Go to an internet cafe, or hell, my hostels had cheap internet and they brought you beer. Totally worth it.

Ditch the phone occasionally. Its not that big a deal.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by You Need a Thneed

After asking multiple times, (Bell told me it was impossible at first) I actually got the ability to download any data disabled on my wifes cellphone plan, since she never uses data. At $50 a MB, accidentally pressing the web button on the phone could cost several dollars, which seemed to happen when my daughter wanted to play with the phone, but could easily happen to my wife or I as well.

Yeah, I eventually added mobile browser on one of my phones just because it was too easy it hit the wrong button and start loading the Bell homepage. It's BS.

[bcb]

As a Natural Person traveling in a Non-Common Law country, this guy is totally absolved of paying his fee.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by squiggs96

That's like buying a car from him and then being pissed that you have to pay for gas. He's another example of why schools should fail kids until they learn basic math skills. Passing them ahead is hurting them.

No, thats like buying a car. Bringing it to Japan, fill up your tank at the gas station only to walk into the store to find out that the sign for the price of gas wasn't in Yen like you thought, but in US dollars, so your were paying $500 a liter for gas.

Yes he should have known to understand the cost before using it, but the fact remains it is an crazy high rate. If I was to receive an alert email from work, a standard text email with a couple image headers it is about 80kb, which is a very reasonable size for an email, it would cost almost $5. I could send 6400 of those same emails in Calgary and it wouldn't cost me any more than the ~$20 i pay for my data in a month.

Doesn't excuse the use of the data though, any idiot should know to not use their phone without a roaming plan/local Sim card, just saying the billing is far to high.

[HeartsOfFire]

I have no sympathy for the car salesman. Seriously, he should've known better.

On the other hand, I have no sympathy for Virgin, either. $7700+ is highway robbery, and there is no way I would pay it.

[fredr123]

The guy was apparently streaming X92.9 using their iPhone app. He is scheduled to be on the afternoon show today to speak about this matter more. Tune in to hear his side of the story.

[ikaris]

From the article:

Boutang said the customer service representative failed to warn him about the pricey cost of using an iPhone abroad, and says he wasn’t told about a roaming data plan he’s since discovered that might have allowed him to use his phone overseas for as little as $200

If this is actually true, Virgin is just gouging him and there is no reason for there to be an $8000 dollar charge as a credit could easily be retroactively applied considering a cheaper roaming alternative was offered.

Sure, the guy is an idiot for not implementing this plan initially before he went over but definitely the charge is pure extortion.

[yads]

They bumped it down to $2K from what I saw on the news yesterday. If he did indeed speak to a CSR about using his phone for data in France I absolutely agree it is the CSR's job to remind him of potential roaming charges. If he did not I have no sympathy for the guy.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by fredr123

That's a great idea, actually.

The Disclosure Statement and all the other required documentation came about as a result of regulations under the Fair Trading Act (Cost of Credit Disclosure Regulations). There are other good regulations in there too about time shares, gift cards, car sales and door to door marketing. It couldn't be that difficult to add a further regulation regarding the true cost of cellular telephone charges.

Throw financial planners in there too. Nobody know how much they are getting compensated.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by Oil Stain

These companies should have to build warnings into their software. If you are going to be charged thousands of dollars to use your cell for for a couple of days you should get fair warning.

Apparently, the iPhone does:




Apparently, the iphone is set to disable data roaming by default. If accurate, then this moron had to turn the ability to roam on himself, with the warnings above.

No sympathy, and even if the charge is ridiculous, he does not deserve a break on it. He should not be rewarded for being stupid.