After the Remunds went on a three-week vacation to Switzerland, they came home to a shocking $143,000 cell phone bill. NBC’s Steven Romo spoke with the couple about how they racked up the charges and how they managed to get them reversed.
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#Vacation #CellPhone #Bill
It’s in the contract.
$15k per gigabyte?!?
Corporate greed
Flock T-Mobile!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
He paid $2500 to a lawyer to fight this charge, instead the lawyer contacted a news organization to do it work for free and pocketed the $2500 from this poor customer. 😂😂😂 talk about rip off.
And yet Tmobile says that their plans have free unlimited international. Hmm
Mine does in the EU and APAC, and I’ve travelled to both in the past year with T-Mobile without issue. It is possible their phone plan was one of those old grandfathered-in ones that didn’t have it – even T-Mobile’s basic Simple Talk + Data plans now have international roaming included, albeit at low data rates and speeds.
Has this person not heard of Whatsapp or Skype which is free
Only if you on wifi !
Using your sim will cost you tens of thousands $$$
Thats the problem its so exhaborent charge that it should be illegal.
Yet not advertised anywhere and most people dont know this.
He seems like the type of person who likes to talk on the phone a lot.
Roaming charges will still happen even if you don’t talk on your phone. Once you travel abroad and you had roaming on your smartphone enabled, your smartphone will automatically connect to an international network over there. When this happened the charges racks up over time whether you use your smartphone or not. Normally to prevent this he must disable roaming and used WiFi instead or if phone company like T-Mobile or Verizon had international roaming plan they could just let him connect to that and he wouldn’t get the international roaming charge cause the plan will cover it. My guess as to why this happen is that he had an international roaming plan on his phone and told T-Mobile to enable it so when he goes abroad it wouldn’t rack up charges but because T-Mobile lie to him by telling him that he’s covered but didn’t enabled the roaming plan (meaning he’s not covered), this happened and it cause him to lose trust in them.
Unfortunate this happened, but with the situation resolved, can we have a laugh over how ridiculous it is that a bill for $100K+ opened with “please pay online”? I don’t care how secure your website is, if you think someone owes you that much, you should forgo the form-letter bill, and take the time to write a message insisting that payment be made directly.
I used to work in Telecom expense management. This was very common, mostly uninformed cell phone users that just turn their phone on and think it because it’s working I can use it. Sadly, hidden in the contract is there right to bend you over and take everything you own directly through your butthole
It’s also weird that there’s only $7.00 due by Jan 1. What’s that?
Buy a local sim card. Always.
yeah that is possible in the past. but now were using esim its harder to use local sim card now.
This is why I hate talking to store reps. They most likely know nothing. It’s better to speak to the corporation directly.
This is disappointing that phone companies are trying to doing this to customers…
But this one takes the cake…
Always turn off data roaming!
While risking $ 50 Thousand + for something worth around $3 in most countried take the sim OUT!
Unfortunatelly your or electronics error is not a deffense.
But if the company said your cover why not use it
@@user-or2vq1vq9w as you saw in this particular case, you are still reliable for the damage cause by company rep
Their recommendation to check if the plan had international coverage was what the man literally did, or at least to the extent that is reasonable (i.e. going to the store and asking a rep). I get that it’s just broad advice for anyone, but it obviously didn’t mean anything for their case. It’s likely the rep didn’t know any better, but as far as business goes, it’s the equivalent of checking your account online and getting seeing the wrong information listed. It is still the fault of the company.
Lucky he got the charges dropped….didnt read the fine print?
Even if he did it, would say $50 for megabite, while everywhere is giga bite used as standard.
Its “legalised” robery.
Time to switch carriers.
Unfortunatelly I found out that most carriers around the world has such pricing.
Its “hidden” under $5 per megabite. Most people are not aware that equals $50 thousand for a gigabite.
He worked way to hard. Just file an FCC complaint.
Its “legalised” crime / robery to charge
$10 thousand+ times the real value.
Time to switch services. Only communicate for emergency on vacation. T mobile has only been in business for 20 years, maybe alltell was the phone of the 90s
He needed to shut up and agree to pay the Scrubs guys and Aqua Man the $143K he owes them. Next time tell your stateside family to leave him alone instead of 1000 hours running your mouth abroad.
Cancelling my Tmobile very soon! contract expires in 1 month, I’m out!
T-Mobile lying to their loyal customer is proof that they can’t be trusted anymore cause it’s profit they care about nowadays. I’m glad he left them for good.
I have AT&T and I always call them up to tell them what countries I’m visiting and I usually purchase their international data plan which is only $10/day up to $100 maximum per billing cycle. I know there are cheaper alternatives like buying a local sim card or whatever, but this has always worked well for me and super convenient!
How is data even worth nearly that much?
You’d think, just like banks with denying purchasing items over seas, that the phone company would cut off data at a certain point and get confirmation from the customer that they intend on the data usage. No they just let the bill rack up.
Over 3 weeks that works out to $4.73 per minute if he was on the phone non stop for the whole 21 days. How can that be?
Many years ago, T-Mobile ran a commercial in which CEO John Legere went to an AT&T store and paid off someone’s $70,000 roaming bill with a winner’s check. Now that’s coming back to bite them.
the detail in the contracts.
why did he hire a lawyer? its not like he was getting sued. i doubt t mobile would even sue them since a jury will likely rule in his favor. worst case scenario theyll just send it to collections
Get everything in writing – email customer service. If you receive a message, save a screenshot as some emails/messages within the company’s login are set to auto-delete. Don’t trust companies that aren’t willing to invest in customer service that can send written communication via email. If you still end up getting verbal confirmation of some thing then record that conversation.
Has to be something with how old their plan was and how it handled INTL roaming. I’ve travelled abroad to Europe and Asia with T-Mobile before on my phone with data roaming on and my plan covers international data, just at lower 3G speeds in some spots and with data caps rather than unlimited. Never had an issue with the bill before.
Did his data roaming through International Space Station? because it shouldn’t cost that much
Just use hotel wifi and turn off the roaming you can text I text massage or just buy SIM card
If I ever take another trip out of America, I won’t be taking my cell phone!
Camera is much cheaper!