Confused Users Keep Racking Up Ridiculous 3G Bills, Wireless Carriers Keep Helping Them
from the your-phone-bill-should-not-require-a-second-mortgage dept
We've seen no limit to stories over the years about wireless customers (including a few semi-famous ones) who wind up with fairly insane wireless broadband bills for any number of reasons. Usually the stories involve someone traveling overseas and not understanding the roaming charges and overages involved, though sometimes the users don't even need to leave port to find themselves hit with a $27,000 3G bill. The latest story of this type (via the Consumerist) involves a user getting a $7,865.84 Verizon Wireless bill after taking his Mifi portable 3G hotspot on a business trip to Tel Aviv. In this case however, the user called Verizon before the trip, studied the overage penalties, and still wound up using 350,000 kb of bandwidth before concluding it was Verizon who screwed up:"The ugly truth is that upon investigating the issue, I found a number of things could have been done by Verizon to protect me as a consumer. They may not mention them outright, but they are there. The fact that these things were not done can only lead me to assume that Verizon would rather their consumers "understand" as little as possible about their TOS.'"
Except as a consumer, it's his responsibility to read the find print on his contract and understand the limitations and penalties of his plan. The user studied the charges, spoke with representatives -- even seemed to have at least a base understanding of what he was going to be charged per kilobyte -- and then chose to use expensive 3G data on an overseas trip anyway. Consumer responsibility and research plays a big part of the equation.
That said, we've been saying for a long time now that these bills demonstrate the fact that carriers aren't doing a particularly good job making service limits clear or educating customers. Many consumers (more than you would think) can't tell the difference between a kilobyte and a lemur, and Verizon's math skills on this front aren't always reliable to begin with. While most carriers have some kind of mechanism in place to help notify users of excessive usage, carriers haven't done a great job notifying users when their bill starts to go nuclear (like many credit card companies do when a large charge appears on your card) or making overages clear. Fortunately, carriers often agree to slash these bills -- but usually only after they receive media attention.
In the UK, where they've seen the same kind of insane 3G bills, regulators have jumped in and addressed the problem by first capping roaming charges -- but then by also requiring (as of July 1) that carriers allow users to set a monthly maximum cap that limits how much they can spend on data each month. Consumers get an automated alert as they approach 80% of that total, then their service is temporarily suspended when the user crosses the spending cap. If users don't choose a limit, a limit of $68 per month is set for them (that's only data and doesn't include voice minutes or other bill totals). Of course here in the States carriers aren't going to want to voluntarily employ tools that reduce how much money they can make off of confused users, and will fight any regulation that limits how much they can charge. So nothing changes, and story after story emerges about users whose phone bills resemble the GDP of small countries.
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Filed Under: bills, ridiculous, roaming, wireless
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Hehe, you rock, Karl. Some of Techdirt's articles have been getting dry... :P
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All That Data is Expensive
FTFY
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Re: All That Data is Expensive
Just how expensive? Well, when you roam, the rate you pay for voice is about 16x what you would pay at home. Let's accept that it costs slightly more to serve a roaming customer, so a slight premium is acceptable -- but 16x is too high. It was enough to induce regulation by the EU telecom regulator, Vivianne Redding, but non Europeans are still screwed.
Now let's consider data: a kilobyte of data, when an American is in Europe, costs 341,300% of what that kilobyte costs in the USA!!!!!!
Does a 3,413x markup sound a bit extreme? I did the calculations on this in this article:
http://www.rcrwireless.com/ARTICLE/20100224/OPINION/100229982/analyst-angle-roaming-rate -rage
Where I write, "Honestly, it goes far, far beyond the pale. If there is competition in the cellular industry, it certainly doesn't seem to be in international roaming."
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Save Me from End Users
See Computer Stupidities For More Examples.
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Re: Save Me from End Users
But that means if 3G/4G carriers want to impose billing systems based on usage, they're going to need to use very BIG pie charts with very colorful measurement metrics if they want it to work...
Fisher Price billing systems, so to speak. :)
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Re: Re: Save Me from End Users
Is it something like San Francisco is seven hours from Los Angeles? (As if miles wasn't weird enough!)
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Re: Re: Re: Save Me from End Users
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mobile mafia racket
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Re: mobile mafia racket
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Microsoft Phone
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Frak You
Yeah, why does the 'moron in a hurry' test only apply when it's going to take away my rights?
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A single phone call had originated from two counties over, and instantly, the cell phone company's fraud prevention system flagged this as a sign my phone had been cloned or compromised in some way. The co. gave me a new phone number and within a few hours my phone service had been turned back on. Maybe this was when mobile phone companies still cared about customer service and limiting their own financial liabilities.
Also, most of the carriers were still regional - later, this mobile phone co. and many others were bought up by the bigger companies. If they could do it then with existing technology on analog cell systems, someone tell me why mobile phone companies can't provide the same kind of fraud-prevention service for customers today.
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Re:
No, it has nothing to do with customer service. This is most definitely because in the case of cloning (which happened much more before the upgrade to digital (1995-97), the carriers themselves bore the cost of fraudulent calls. They shut off your phone to save themselves money. It would have been more convenient for you if they didn't shut off your line until you received a replacement. But it wasn't about helping you.
But your case is instructive. We see how quickly they can react to an anomaly situation. Apparently that haste doesn't apply when the moral suasion of increased revenues is at play. 20 years later, the carriers find it too difficult to put in an early warning system, like Karl mentioned.
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After the first verizon fuckup (.002 dollars vs. .002 cents) a couple people decided to try and figure out the prices for some data plans. After calling verizon 20 times and asking the same two questions, only ONE operator got both answers correct. Link here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdKwRdWocco&feature=related
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Re:
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Apparently, their math skill aren't the only thing lacking...
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Re:
286,626.95 of Unlimited data used.
First of all, what units are they measuring my data in?
Second, how can it be unlimited if there is a limit?
There's not even a little star next to Unlimited telling you to read your contract! If I look at that (as a new data plan customer), why would it even occur to me to look into the fine print in my contract for any info on my data plan's limit when the main account info page says UNLIMITED?
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Re:
Makes 25 quid seem OK.
Of course, that is only if I don't think ahead and subscribe to a special roamer data plan, but that is the behavior many travelers exhibit, not knowing any better.
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Re: Re:
This would mean that 5GB runs you approximately $540.
Oh, yeah. That's much more reasonable. [sarc]
Most carriers in the world have similar pricing models.
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Re: Re: Re:
I used the price per Kb of
$0.002/Kb when actually the AT&T rate is $0.0195/Kb now.
http://www.wireless.att.com/travelguide/coverage/coverage_details.jsp?MNC=CING&CIDL=250& amp;dropFormChoice=1.29;0.99;250&product1rate=$1.29&product2rate=$0.99&x=52&y=7
T hus, I UNDERSTATED the costs in the two comments above by a factor of 10.
If I go to the EU, without a discounted plan, for 5GB, I would pay $20,447.23.
If I was in the EU with the 20MB for $20 plan, I would ONLY pay $20,385.
Awesome deal. Let's roam! I'm packing my bags right now!!
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User Agreements
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Re: User Agreements
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Re:
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Re:
Further, the telco should understand the telco business, the details of roaming, etc. But the subscriber should not need to. They should be able to use the service with the expectation that if they are getting overcharged, it is not by three orders of magnitude.
Data roaming rates are 3413 times the domestic data rates, so I think the blame is not evenly distributed between telco and subscriber.
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Just think how attractive a carrier would be if they said, "Go ahead and do whatever you want, and we will automatically put you on the best price package for that billing month". Then I wouldn't have to worry about getting ripped off. I'd still be discouraged from hogging data because I'd still have to pay, but I wouldn't then be forced to guess about what I'm going to need next month, and they'd sell MORE that way because customer like me wouldn't just turn OFF data when traveling for fear of a $10,000 bill.
The current system of making people predict their future needs is idiotic, makes consumers constantly worry about getting screwed, and puts the carriers in an unnecessarily adversarial relationship with their customers. You'd think somebody would break ranks and bill sensibly.
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cept t-mobile
As of yesterday (04/23/10) T-mobile (us) only has one data plan that would allow any overage what-so-ever and that is capped at $50 no matter how high you go. Including data plans for regular phones, smartphones, and data sticks. At worst with a smartphone or a datastick you will simply be throttled back speed-wise until your new billing period starts. With regular phones they charge $1.99 per meg, and after every time you use the web you will get a message letting you know how much you've used, and point you in the direction of an unlimited plan if you break $10.
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Re: cept t-mobile
If you read a few words of the article, you'd see we're talking about international roaming here. T-Mobile has charges much like the other US carriers.
"With T-Mobile Internet, you can access the Internet from locations around the globe—for $10.24 per MB in Canada and $15.36 per MB in other countries. Charges will vary depending upon the amount of data you send and receive, and/or the amount of data you download"
from:
http://www.t-mobile.com/Business/Information.aspx?tp=Bus_Tab_InternationalServic es&tsp=Bus_Sub_InlRoaming
Hey, that's only $102,400 for 5GB in "other countries". Awesome deal! [epic sarc]
T-Mo has this nice little video that shows users how to turn off data services so they don't get screwed while abroad:
http://support.t-mobile.com/videos.html?autoplay=Data_Sync_v1.flv
Nice of them to offer the vid, but it's safe to assume that very few customers dig up this kind of information before they travel.
It's sad that it's necessary for users to deactivate the usefulness of their mobile data devices during the very times (travel away from your home and office PC) that we would need them most.
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At least provide a reliable tool so I can see the usage...
I actually understand that it's my responsibility to understand the usage charges, and I took steps to reduce my data usage while traveling. However, the bills always seemed to be much higher than I expected. I would sometimes get a call or text message from my provider, warning me that my usage seemed high - but this didn't come until my running bill had hit a figure that was four to five times my normal bill.
I spoke with a customer service rep, and asked for two things:
1. the ability to set my own limit for when they should call me about extreme bills, and
2. a tool that keeps a running tally of my data usage, so I can see for myself when to turn the data connection off.
My provider was not able to provide either of these things, especially in the case of $2, because there is apparently often a lag of up to several days in reporting data usage while roaming internationally.
Why this should be the case ten years into the 21st Century is beyond me.
On the data "counting" tool, there are lots of kilobytes zipping back and forth that you can't see. I can see an email, and how big it is. However, I don't know how many kbs were involved in setting up the connection, inquiring, logging out, etc., etc., etc. - all those "background" processes. I don't doubt that they use kbs, too, I just can't "see" them, so they don't show up in my own tallies.
I think there are third-party tools availble for this, but it really seems a good service provider would provide at least SOME rudimentary way for its customers to track their usage.
HM
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Re: At least provide a reliable tool so I can see the usage...
Consider things like the iPhone's visual voicemail. That is a data service, and you are charged data roaming rates for the media file that carries your voicemail message. This happens whether you request that data or not.
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The Freedom to Innovate
Whatever happened to the concept of corporate self-constraint? No one is forcing these companies to implement these excessive charges.
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How to roam in UK when travelling from US
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Re: How to roam in UK when travelling from US
1. Go to carphone warehouse in UK and buy a "pay as you go" handset. Mine was £15 including £10 talk time (yes, £5 for a handset, no contract) and it came with UK charger and also a USB charger that can be used to charge it up before you get to the UK. Talk time never expires, what you don't use this trip, save till next trip. Only a triband (no good in US) but hey, it's cheap.
2. When in UK, make all calls using this UK phone. But get a SkypeToGo number for calls out of UK (ie back to US)
3. For incoming calls, either leave a message on your US cell giving out the UK number, or leave a message saying "send me an SMS".
Data
4. Need data on your phone ? If you REALLY do, look for a UK PAYG data plan and a different UK handset. But if you can live with just getting your netbook onto a dataplan, get a PAYG "mobile broadband" from "3 telecom". £10 for 1GB which expires after 30 days, which works over most of Britain and plugs into USB. You might only get 1Mbit/s but you'll be connected with a cap on the spend.
If this seems like a lot of effort, then just go on paying $1000+ each trip instead.
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Data charges in Canada
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When I Began Working
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Typo
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NET10 saves - forget 3G
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