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iPhone International Data Horror Story
- Thread starter PupnTaco
- Start date
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I feel bad for the original poster. I looked into this, when I got my phone, and I did some math, and I knew overseas use would be almost impossible at those rates.
I'd be scared to turn it on. ha-ha.
I actually thought the fee was $0.015 per kb. So .005 is better than I thought.
600 MB sure is a lot of use. However, even if someone used 100 MB that would be $500 if the above story is true, so even that is crazy, and I couldn't afford that.
AT&T does need to offer an unlimited international plan like they do for blackberry.
I'd be scared to turn it on. ha-ha.
I actually thought the fee was $0.015 per kb. So .005 is better than I thought.
600 MB sure is a lot of use. However, even if someone used 100 MB that would be $500 if the above story is true, so even that is crazy, and I couldn't afford that.
AT&T does need to offer an unlimited international plan like they do for blackberry.
I'm about to travel overseas too and I'm bringing the iPhone with me. However, my bill is being paid by my Corp. so I don't have to worry about that (however, I will double check).
As for the comment about the BlackBerry unlimited data usage: be VERY careful about how you read that. I know that on T-Mobile they offer the same service which I would activate everytime I travel to Europe. However, after the first couple of bills I noticed I was still being charged, despite the "unlimitedness" of the data service.
So the devil is in the details - You get unlimited data, i.e. EMAILS/Pins/Attachments but when you web surf you pay the KB. That's the crux of the issue.
Since then, I only retrieve and send emails and my bill has substantially plummeted to expected prices. I'm sure AT&T has the same rule.
As for the iPhone, I doubt they'll ever give an unlimited data plan for abroad usage b/c they usually don't have it in their countries, esp. not in Europe.
Congratulation, ....they must have figured no one would have downloaded that much porn had they known the KB rate
.Congrats dude!
I'm doing a happy dance 'fer ya!Well, that reassures me that my iPhone won't kill my Corp's wallet but I think I'll totally be fine going abroad. I only plan on checking emails and nothing else so...
well, maybe the occasional showing off of it's YouTube/H.264 skillz to a European pedestrian
The Moral Of The Story is...
Right On Pupntaco!!!
That frack'n rocks,
but, what exactly was the mis communication, from reading the thread, it sounds like you didn't do the math ( i woundn't have either )
Congrats, and thank to whom ever pointed out :
FIVE DOLLARS A MEGABITE
and
FiFTY CENTS A SMS
in 29 countries
Right On Pupntaco!!!
That frack'n rocks,
but, what exactly was the mis communication, from reading the thread, it sounds like you didn't do the math ( i woundn't have either )
Congrats, and thank to whom ever pointed out :
FIVE DOLLARS A MEGABITE
and
FiFTY CENTS A SMS
in 29 countries
I concur.
You will likely have to ask to speak to the supervisor and then his/her super, but plead your case, indicate that what they told you initially (.005 cents per kb) and they might waive your charges to avoid bad publicity.
If they don't then, seriously, go to the local tv station with your horror story. They should be more than happy to interview you about this (being as though the iPhone was uberhyped and the masses still have a huge curiosity about it). That might be enough to get AT&T to change their tune a bit.
Best of luck, I understand how difficult it can be to fight the corporate machine (I'm still owed 2 grand from a company that will never pay up). Fight the good fight.
Edit: left the window open too many days. Missed the later posts. Congrats on getting AT&T to see reason. I guess that gives us all hope that they are a new company.
Wow, with that new international plan of $25 for 20 megabytes, that's pretty much cheaper than what Rogers has up here. I'm tempted to get an iPhone and roam here since .005 per kb is much lower than what we pay up here for data. Sad isn't it, that I can get cheaper phone service in Canada by roaming than by having a phone here...
Still, $5 a Mb to use it in the UK is pretty good, considering that's £2.50, and I get charged £4.10 per Mb, and I have a contract in the UK, and only use the damn thing in the UK, on it's home network.
I might get and activate an iPhone contract and use it over here. Sounds like it'd be cheaper.
I might get and activate an iPhone contract and use it over here. Sounds like it'd be cheaper.
Well, if you're tech savvy at all you should have immediately started questioning the "kay bee" is it kilobits or kilobytes that is a factor of 8 difference in the price. At "point oh five cents" ($0.0005) per Kb you end up paying $4.96/MB. If it was KB then it's really $0.51/MB. Either one of these seems too low for your bill. If the rep really meant "point five cents" ($0.005) then it makes things more feasible at $49.60/MB if they were quoting bits rather than bytes the 'b' portion being upper or lower case can make a world of difference.
You're lucky that at&t decided to refund the charge since they were completely within their rights to be sticklers. They quoted you a rate, they charged you that rate, you didn't do enough homework to see how much that rate really would cost you before you started your internet usage. $0.45/minute overage charges don't sound like much until you make a call a few minutes before "nights and weekends" start and have a 2 hour phone call that costs $54.00 because you had none of your normal plan minutes left.
I do think that companies, when quoting data rates, should actually use a real world example. Instead of quoting $0.005/Kb, they should also tell you that "The Apple website is roughly 1 MB and will cost you $50 to access at this rate." so that an average non-techie person will have an idea of what they are getting themselves into.
Of course that could have all been avoided if the OP:
- Didn't bring their iPhone and opted to use a different phone
- Was able to use another carriers SIM
- Could either get prompted when data is about to transfer (with ability to cancel) or could turn off edge data altogether
I just got off the phone with AT&T. A representative asked her supervisor about this problem, I was on hold for a couple minutes while she checked.
The Edge network can't be turned off over seas. I asked if there was a way for them to send my request up the line to make an option to turn it off. She said that probably won't happen, because Edge is a network and the only way to do that is to remove the data plan. I wasn't going to argue the issue because this was just a customer service rep at the first level.
I had a note added to my account that I didn't want to pay for Edge while traveling in the UK, but wanted to use the phone and text messaging. So if I get a huge data bill, at least they'll know I wanted Edge turned off in the UK. I'm fine with paying $1.29 a minute and .50 cents for each text message back to the states.
Hopefully they'll have wi-fi in Heathrow, and then I'll only use it where there is a wireless connection.
The Edge network can't be turned off over seas. I asked if there was a way for them to send my request up the line to make an option to turn it off. She said that probably won't happen, because Edge is a network and the only way to do that is to remove the data plan. I wasn't going to argue the issue because this was just a customer service rep at the first level.
I had a note added to my account that I didn't want to pay for Edge while traveling in the UK, but wanted to use the phone and text messaging. So if I get a huge data bill, at least they'll know I wanted Edge turned off in the UK. I'm fine with paying $1.29 a minute and .50 cents for each text message back to the states.
Hopefully they'll have wi-fi in Heathrow, and then I'll only use it where there is a wireless connection.
I feel your pain. This same thing happened to me with T-Mobile. I have no idea why these companies can't extend the (still exorbitant) BlackBerry plans to other devices.
Like you, I learned my lesson the hard way. With my iPhone, I didn't even enable international roaming, instead just using phone cards and pay phones on a recent trip through the Balkans. But using the WiFi capabilities of the iPhone were invaluable -- and free!
Man, I wish that everytime I made a mistake I could just complain about it and have the situation disappear........
Good lord, I hope that my company never contracts with your company for web development ... if you don't even understand the basic fundamentals of data. Yikes.
I'm going to guess that you're not very good at your job, if you approach everything in life with such a careless attitude and a sense of entitlement.
your a fool and deserve to be made to pay the bill. How stupid of you to not think roaming data usage wouldn't cost so much. How naiive are you?! Hello your abroad for starters, you know how much calls cost in europe up to $3 per minute so what did you expect with data. Absolute TOOL