Rene Remund charged $143K in roaming fees by T-mobile phone carrier during trip to Switzerland after being told he was covered by his plan. What went wrong and how can you avoid getting lobbed with similar high fees?
Price gouging extraordinaire for the unwitting… A Florida man and his wife were given the shock of their lives after returning to the United States following a trip to Switzerland after viewing their T-mobile phone bill after having used the US carrier’s ‘roaming’ services while abroad.
Rene Remund and his wife Linda said they thought nothing of uploading images and video on their phone and sharing ‘magic moments’ with friends and family back home. Now they wish they hadn’t.
The ‘magic moments’ during September’s overseas trip came to a staggering $143,442.74, according to ABC Action News.
‘I thought it was $143, which seemed reasonable…’
Prior to traveling, Remund as he ‘always does’ ensured his mobile phone provider was notified of his travels, by going in-store to share his overseas movements. He said that as a customer of 30 years, he was told he was ‘covered.’
Not once did Rene Remund think texts and images could be racking up thousands of daily costs in ‘roaming fees’.
Speaking to Scripps News Tampa, Remund, who originally hails from Switzerland thought there must have been a mistake in his bill and believed it must have been for $143 which he thought to be ‘reasonable’.
‘I get this T-Mobile bill and it doesn’t bother me very much because I was reading $143,’ he told the outlet, adding it wasn’t until he went to pay the bill that he realized a few more zeros were involved.
‘I look at the bill and I say, ‘Excuse me’,’ he said.
‘$143,000.00 … are you guys crazy?’
According to the mobile phone bill, Remund racked up 9.5 GB of data during his European vacation, costing him thousands of dollars each day.
While 5-10GB isn’t considered a large amount of data, not being covered by roaming fees will cause a user to run up thousands of dollars very quickly.
‘I called [T-Mobile] and the girl put me on hold for a while,’ he explained.
‘She said let me check this out and I’ll get back to you. She gets back and says, yeah this is a good bill.
‘I said, ‘What do you mean it’s a good bill?’ And she says ‘Well, this is what you owe.”
Still the phone carrier refused to budge. Until that is Remund got the media involved.
It was only upon reporting the bill to the local news station Scripps News Tampa that T-Mobile relented and waived the charges.
Notes T-Mobile on its website: ‘To avoid bill shock, check with your service provider before you travel to see what options are available (and check to see if international roaming is part of the plan)’.
So how to get out of hefty roaming fees?
While roaming charges are in many cases a thing of the past, certain plans still apply them in the traditional way – per gigabyte.
If a customer is on an older plan that doesn’t include international roaming for data and calling, users should make sure to re-set their adjustments to aeroplane mode and or wi-fi when using data to be certain the device doesn’t connect to an international network.
In many countries users are now instead charged simply a flat daily or monthly fee.
And then there were these comments on the web that caught this author’s attention. See what you think?
‘No one should be exposed to outrageous bills like this. Congress should act on this to prevent it from ever happening.’
‘Yeah, Congress will get right on that. Congressmen responsible for this industry are being paid many thousands by T-Mobile (and the others) just to keep them from enacting legislation to address this issue.’
‘Maybe next time you should consider purchasing an eSim for your country of destination.’
‘He probably had the Alexander Hamilton plan.’
