Phone Bill Help?

[ignitiion]

Well, this summer, as with most summers now, my family took a trip up to Maine from Virginia where we reside. I didn't think much of it, as we weren't doing anything new, and this has never happened before, so i just packed my phone up and headed off. Now about 3 days into the trip now, i JUST received my first message stating that i had over 100 MB of data roaming usage. I looked this up, and it looks to be about $1500 worth of usage.. This would be my fault, if i hadn't turned Data Roaming on my iPhone off, but i had? I checked, and it had been off the whole time. What gives, i stayed within the country with the roaming feature turned off, but there is no possible way that i would have accumulated 100 MB other ways. Is anyone knowledgeable here about any of this, and could i possibly call Customer Support and get my charge reversed? Thanks!

 

[Zerkerfist]

A lot of phone companies are very sneaky about their roaming charges (from my experience), and it is incredibly easy to rack up a huge bill without realizing it. Where I live, on the West Coast of Canada, all I have to do is go down to a beach along the coast and my cell phone starts picking up signals from towers in the United States and I start getting slammed with roaming charges. This happened to me once when I went down to a bonfire at the beach and left my cellphone on, and I was furious when I found out that I had been charged for all the hours I spent down at the beach, considering I hadn't actually traveled anywhere out of town. But that is just the way it works sometimes >_<

If you call up customer service and ask them nicely to remove the charges and explain what happened, there is a chance you can get it reversed or removed. If they refuse, I would make a big stink out of it and tell them you are extremely disappointed that they would treat a loyal customer like this, threaten to leave them, etc. If they are anything like my phone company, at the very mention of leaving them for somebody else they will bend backwards for you trying to make you happy and choose to stay

Good luck though man.. $1500 in roaming fees is truly brutal.

 

[Yenthe666]

Ugh I always hate to hear such things!
Just threaten them with leaving, law-suiting them and such
They'll be fast enough to 'solve' it and they will find all kind of exuses.
I once saved 250$ that way LOL. I think companies shouldn't be allowed to do such things..

 

[Davidp123]

Call and complain, happened to a family member once, it was a $400 charge and they brought it down to $40, since you had data off they might not make you pay.

 

Call up Customer Service and explain + complain. Some companies are dud that way =/

 

This is the reason I turn off roaming on my phone, and never use it and stick to wifi as i'm too afraid to go over my measley 500mb limit.

 

[ignitiion]

Yeah, i figured it out. We were getting cell tower signal from Canada, even though we had roaming off.. AT&T is closed today since it is Sunday. Will be calling tomorrow to hopefully sort things out. Thanks for the advice, everyone!