AT&T Charges $750 For One Minute of International Data Roaming 321
reifman (786887) writes 'Last week, AT&T shut down my data service after I turned roaming on in Canada for one minute to check Google maps. I wasn't able to connect successfully but they reported my phone burned through 50 MB and that I owed more than $750. Google maps generally require 1.3 MB per cell. They adamantly refused to reactivate my U.S. data service unless I 'agreed' to purchase an international data roaming package to cover the usage. They eventually reversed the charges but it seems that the company's billing system had bundled my U.S. data usage prior to the border crossing with the one minute of international data roaming.'
Even better bundle (Score:2)
They now bundle "location services" for your AT&T credit card so that instead of somebody robbing you for your wallet, they now have to rob both your cell phone and your wallet, meaning you'll lose even more when you get robbed.
It's a feature, not a bug.
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50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF? Not that a 50GB warrants a bill like that either.. this reminds me of the bad old days where you never knew if you went over your allocated time/minutes/etc until you got a bill, highly inflated for what it is.
This practice should be outlawed.
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Informative)
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminds me of running instances on AWS. AT&T has no financial incentive to reduce these surprise charges. Seriously there should be a hard cap that we can set. Sure we are responsible for these charge, but most of the times naive consumers are not aware. Amazon clearly posts the prices of their instances, but it's not uncommon to get a $30,000 bill accidentally due to some developer testing out their application by spinning off instances. You get charged for the whole hour when an instance starts on AWS and things can show up on their accounting system weeks later.
A real time system for monitoring usage should be mandated by law and sufficient warning should be available. A data roaming plan should automatically be applied if it will save you money. Most importantly we should have the ability to set a cap.
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I use AWS and I find the usage reports are pretty much up to the minute at any given time. So I think saying 'wow we didn't notice for weeks' is a bit of a stretch.
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Their alerts are not very timely though. So, sure you can stare at the usage meter and catch it, but it might be days before you get an alert email. I did this for a personal vm, just because I wanted to make sure it didn't go crazy by accident. I set it to $10 and $20 alerts I think. By the time I got the $10 alert it was over $13. Now imagine I was a business and we were talking thousands or tens of thousands.... That's pretty bogus.
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Guaranteed by your personal credit card? Whose fault is that? If your teaching, get the institution to foot the bill, so if (or in your case - when) they blitz AWS, the institution has recourse to bill the student and you aren't on a express train to financial raping. Your school should never have put you on the financial hook for covering such expenses - at least if they have any credibility.
$15 a meg (Score:2)
$15 a meg at least it's not $20 a meg as that is $1000 for 50MB.
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Insightful)
This is why I like T-Mobile. While coverage is (and likely will always be) quite limited for 4G, I've never seen them cross the line from "typical big company evil" to the black depths of "phone company evil". Plus, they have decent pre-paid plans, which lets you strictly limit surprises.
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile "not evil"??? They gouged me $150 for 1.5MB data roaming from Bosnia (I'm from Poland), and would take more had I used a contract rather than a prepaid plan. And unlike the guy in TFA, I did not get them to reverse the charges.
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But were the charges legitimate (not in error)?
The bar for "normal big company evil" is pretty low - one might argue it's resting on the ground. But phone companies own lots of trenching equipment and can still fail to clear a bar resting on the ground. And disrupt access to the bar for 6 weeks, while accidentally charging you $700 for it. I have no proof that the CEO of AT&T can't have an orgasm unless he strangles a puppy.
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I think this is because US T-mobile and Deusche Telekom T Mobile aren't really the same company anymore aside from the matching Logos and GSM frequencies.
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Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair, T-Mobile in the USA is not the same company as whatever has that name in Europe. The US company is only partially owned by Deutsche Telekom in fact.
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*All* telecom companies are evil.
But T-Mobile is the least evil available in the US.
AT&T, on the other hand, *define* evil.
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Yep.. T-Mobile is awesome in the USA. The tethering works great. No ridiculous prices to add SMS. Free international roaming (slower speeds but I'll take it! Also can buy data at a faster speed). I was on AT&T's plan for years. I had a grandfathered unlimited data pan with them. Once they sent me a notice for exceeding normal use (wasn't that much to be honest, I think the phone hit 3 Gigs of data due to our son watching some Netflix videos) and slowed my connection down (actually it was my wife's phone
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Joke's on you... now that everyone you know listened to your advice and switched to TMO, they're going to be bought out by Sprint, and all your friends will curse you and refuse to listen to your advice any more.
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Re: 50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Funny)
God ... the courier font ... it burns
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Adam Savage ran into this before [computerworld.com].
Either AT&T is incompetent, or (quite possibly) the Canadian carriers are gouging.
This is hardly the first time we've heard of this happening. And I doubt it will be the last.
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Interesting)
FYI - carriers don't make money on regular subscriptions. Instead, ROAMING charges fuel the profits. And they're HUGE profits - think $/minute for a phone call, 5 cents per kB (not kiB) not including headers, etc. (At 5c/kB, that's $50/MB)
In fact, if you ever wondered why Telus and Bell (Canadian carriers, who normally did CDMA) installed 3G HSPA equipment 5 years ago... it's because Bell was a huge Olympic sponsor. And with athletes and visitors coming to Canada, they will most likely be carrying GSM/3GPP phones. And whose network would THOSE roam on? Rogers, who didn't sponsor the Olympics.
So Bell would be sponsoring the Olympics, but Rogers would be picking up the massive profits from roaming visitors. Naturally that needed to be fixed which is why Telus/Bell (who share equipment) rolled out HSPA equipment post-haste so they could at least get at that roaming profit. Given they have 1x equipment normally, the sensible plan would've been to just install LTE equipment when it became available.
So yeah, Canada carriers DO gouge, and your data was probably charged at an "innocent" rate of pennies per kB. $750 for 50MB would be 1.5 cents/kB.
Re:50MB = 750$ (Score:5, Informative)
FYI - carriers don't make money on regular subscriptions.
Citation needed.
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Even still ... there is no sensible way that 50MB of data is worth $11K.
That's simply obscene.
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LOL, or $750 ... something like that ... need more coffee apparently.
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It is to be outlawed, as long as you live in the EU. In the US, no such luck. Instead, you have a "stupid tax", for people too fucking stupid to install a foreign sim card in their AT&T sim card friendly phones.
This isn't that complicated and AT&T is shit, but it's not that hard (and a whole lot cheaper and more convenient) to get a sim in a foreign country and basically treat it the same as your home wireless service - just with substantially better reception.
Having to "turn on" data temporarily in
Data Roaming (Score:2)
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on the website or via a smartphone app you can add international data to your account. it's like $30 for 100MB
you can pro rate it, start it from the date you change, and cancel the next month if you want. point is just add it before you go and no surprises
This (Score:5, Informative)
Buy a sim or get a cheap Canadian burner phone or.... how about just asking directions.
Data roaming is a scam just like text messages.
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Better yet you can use an app like Sygic that downloads the maps in advance. At least this way, you don't care if you are roaming or even if you have a signal at all.
Re:This (Score:4, Informative)
LOL ... my TomTom hasn't incurred roaming charges even once.
So far it's been compatible with every rental car I've had.
And no extra fees besides my map updates.
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I'm going to plug a free alternative here (not affiliated):
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Free OSM-based map downloads for pretty much everywhere OSM are available - with update notifications. The interface is not quite up to the level of paid apps when it comes to polish, but it definitely holds its own. I think they make their money off people that use TomTom map data within the app (it supports that too).
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I would because I have T-Mobile, and they don't rape me when I travel internationally.
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That's still astronomical. There was a time, about twenty years ago when UK GSM providers simply charged you the local rate for service when roaming plus a 15% markup. Local calls were cheap when roaming. Other calls more expensive, but affordable. In the meantime, the cost of calls has plummeted in just about every nation, yet the cost of roaming has soared.
AT&T (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:AT&T (Score:5, Insightful)
t-mobile (Score:5, Informative)
... just sayin
Every one of their new plans they have unlimited data including international.
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... just sayin
Every one of their new plans they have unlimited data including international.
It's among the reasons I too am a customer of theirs. It's also what worries me about the Sprint merger. I have a gut feeling that we'll end up with a Sprint-like T-Mobile (not super-evil, but still a huge corp), rather than a T-Mobile like Sprint (a company that seems to go out of its way to make life miserable for Ma Bell and VZW).
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This! My wife went to Mexico recently so I called them to find out what terrible charges she would incur. It turns out text messages are completely free, phone calls are like 20 cents a minute, and data usage ... was either free or similarly cheap, can't remember which.
F**k AT&T.
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Free, though you're throttled. You can get the throttling removed for a rate similar to what other carriers charge for international data packages, and you can add or remove it at need. I spent a month in Europe earlier this year though, and found the free data to be quite sufficient. It was fast enough for Skype (completely avoiding the $0.20/min call rates) and even for most app updates and for music screaming. I also sent/received over 1000 messages, a mix of SMS and even MMS, without being charged anyth
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Unlimited data is not unlimited data, and their international coverage caps out at 1GB.
Just get a foreign sim card and people can stop dealing with this weird crap where they pay excessive amounts for standard service.
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How is their unlimited data not unlimited? I've broken 10GB/month on it without any problems. Maybe if you try really hard to abuse it they care, but for anything anywhere near normal usage they don't. Mind you, I pay a little extra each month ($20) to have the throttling soft-cap removed entirely, and also to get the tethering cap bumped up (is that what you were referring to?)
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1) You can raise that cap, or eliminate it.
2) Sure, if you had some kind of magical analog modem capable of ~200Kbps (EDGE speeds).
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My parents used to use them, but had to go to Verizon because T-Mobile, Sprint, etc. doesn't work in the rural mountain areas. :(
happened to me too (Score:2)
in laws used 20MB and it cost like $700
i called AT&T and they took off most of it
and i explained to my family that next time you go to mexico turn off roaming or pay for an unlocked phone and use a local SIM or buy the international package. i was going to add it on, but i didn't know my inlaws were taking their phones
Re:happened to me too (Score:5, Interesting)
Newsflash: AT&T Screws Its Customers (Score:3)
I'm not saying this isn't ridiculous, but is it really Slashdot-worthy news? AT&T has been screwing its customers over on roaming charges since cell phones were invented, and even extreme cases like this one are a dime a dozen.
Sucks for the OP but it doesn't seem news-worthy to me.
Re:Newsflash: AT&T Screws Its Customers (Score:5, Insightful)
no, it's not newsworthy
but it feels good giving them as much bad PR as we can handle
post a story like this every other month
"consumers screwed by oligopolies" category should be a thing
Would have been fine paying $20? (Score:2)
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$20 is expensive, however it more just payment for using the phone where you really wasn't suppose to. Sure $20 hurts. But $750 could mean not having money to pay your rent/mortgage for the month.
Point Roberts (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Point Roberts (Score:5, Interesting)
Its actually a simple fix if their carier actually cared. A custom PRL for those customers could keep them off AT&T towers in that area.
A PRL is a prefered roaming list and the phone uses it to have your phone connect to the cheapest signal for them when their tower is not availible or full. You can find tools that may allow you to edit one and instal it yourself. I've done it when a storm made the closest tower to my home unreliable so i made it connect to the next closest one. But i was using an outdated rooted boost mobile phone so i don't know if you need root to do it yourself or not or if any phone will work.
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ever since operators moved away from manual call switching to SW control call setup there were no reason to charge people per call/duration/volume of traffic other than providing reasons for the customers not to overload network with pr0n. Other than that the costs of network are fixed after the network is built and roaming is configured. This is one thing. The other is that the every phone I had so far (and I had a few) had an option to give user control over the network they wanted to use. Some even had l
Re:Point Roberts (Score:5, Insightful)
Or, you know, just disable roaming. Every phone I've owned in the last four years, and probably the ones before it, had that option...
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According to the spec, the SIM card has several files that contain information about the networks the phone is allowed or disallowed to connect to. These files are EF PLMN and EF FPLMN, they can be edited if you have PIN1. They're present in both, 2G SIM and 3G USIM cards. For more details, see section 10.2.16 EF FPLMN (Forbidden PLMNs) [etsi.org] of the corresponding ETSI standard.
This article on PLMN management [lazybit.com] describes how they can be updated.
Even though this problem has been resolved a long time ago, in my pract
Dump ATT (Score:2, Funny)
When I finally dumped ATT (after twice shutting off my service while having paid them in full) my life took a turn for the better. A week or so after dumping them I got a call from ATT customer retention trying to get me back. When I told them that their billing is messed up and I would rather cut off the end of my finger and write letters in blood using the post office than go back to ATT the rep said "Many people have told me the same thing.". After hanging up I'm not sure she referred to the billing
RAZR fro the win! (Score:3)
My unlocked, prepaid, 6 year old RAZR works perfectly well as a cell phone all over the world (with local SIM). And I don't have to worry about roaming charges or data plans.
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Wont any SIM based phone work with a local SIM? Isn't that the point?
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Funny, my HTC Desire C isn't locked to the Carrier. My last two Motorola Krazr phones weren't either.
I didn't think you could carrier lock a SIM based phone ... but I could be completely mistaken.
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You can do a sim lock on a sim based phone, there's even more than one level of it...
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You're completely mistaken. Nearly all phones sold in the US, whether GSM or CDMA, SIM-using or not, are locked. On SIM-using phones (all GSM and LTE-capable devices, some others), the radio firmware simply refuses to place non-emergency calls if it doesn't recognize the SIM. You can get "unlock codes" which remove this anti-feature... or you can buy factory-unlocked phones, if you look hard enough for them.
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Mine isn't. Apple sells unlocked phones from their stores or web page. Lots of stores and webpages sell unlocked Android or dumb phones (I have an unlocked RAZR too). If you buy the locked phone from the carrier, well, you get what you pay for.
Time to switch to TMobile (Score:3, Interesting)
I switched from Verizon when they screwed me like this (in that case, they refused to reverse a $300 overage charge). I switched to AT&T where I got "rollover minutes" so going over my minutes wouldn't result in that kind of overage. I still ended up paying for random data roaming (which I learned to have turned off before international trips), and when my wife accidentally used my line to call her family overseas. Plus AT&T started finding ways to charge us an extra allotment of data for my wife's cell that would suspiciously jump over the 250MB data line at around the 27th day of billing.
Now I'm on TMobile, where I don't pay overage for minutes (unlimited!), I have unlimited data (if I use my 2GB high speed, I go to EDGE unless I authorize more data - no overage). I pay no overage for roaming data, or texts. My wife pays $10/mo for being able to call her mom in europe on her cell, again unlimited.
All in all, we get 5 lines on our TMO account for what we were paying for 2 lines on either AT&T or Verizon. And the quality and coverage is better in almost every way (yes, smaller towns and inside museums/warehouses will result in bad/no coverage for TMO - I don't land in those situations very often at all).
I just had the opposite problem on Verizon (Score:3)
Before leaving on my five-week visit to Europe, I enabled Verizon's buck-a-minute Global Voice Roaming on my iPhone, after having the website verify that a 4S could be used overseas. It qualified, but when I got over there I encountered five solid weeks of No Service, and so Verizon got no revenue whatever out of my overseas experience. I, on the other hand, was able to make do by using the Skype app over WiFi.
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Next time, just call Verizon before leaving and buy a SIM card when you get there. They will unlock the GSM portion of the phone for overseas use. The iPhone 4S has a Micro-SIM slot (even the Verizon version) and you can put in a SIM from any International carrier and save loads over paying roaming fees.
https://community.verizonwirel... [verizonwireless.com]
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The definition of "used overseas" on the Verizon site is that your phone supports GSM. In fact, iPhones before the 4 were GSM-only, which meant that US customers were limited to AT & T as a provider.
This is why I straight talk on AT&T (Score:2)
Yes when you cross the border you don't get service (I live in NY near border).
However, a cheap prepaid sim up in Canada is easy to get at a convenience store or mall.
So I pay $42.50/month (ebay for wife, discount for auto refill on mine) for unlimited calls/texts/data (LTE speeds for 3gb, 2g/3g speeds after 3gb), and no surprise bills. With my unlocked Nexus 4, just get a cheap sim when you cross a border, go international.
I tried talking a few people into pre pay, but they don't like it. They like monthly
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Note that Net10 and StraightTalk are both actually part of the same company (TracFone).
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I know they are. But on net10 my wife had issues with data. My sim card in her phone, data, her sim card in my phone no data. And yeah the CS with tracfone is outsourced, it sux. I can't understand them.
Why I switched to ST. MMS/SMS/Data/etc all work. Have had no issues.
In fact using their website to get the APN, her APN is different from mine. I think because mine is an old cut down Sim, and here's is the one made for micro newer.
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Not same price, my discount for auto pay is $42.50, cricket is $45, and I get 500mb more in data, however that $10 off per line. Tempting. But so far past almost 2 years been happy with ST. Gonna stick with it for now. But thanks for heads up. Always looking for other MNVO's for ATT.
original iPhone couldn't turn off roaming (Score:3)
I ran into this issue when my iPhone was downloading email and roaming.
ATT billed me $500 and I wouldn't pay it. They tried to blame Apple and I informed them that the iPhone was their issue, too, as they were the only carrier for it. As it turns out, customer service is really collections, and we had a fine yelling match. Finally the lady agreed to send it up the line, and I had her read me exactly what she was going to send, since she did not have my interests at heart.
They did reverse the charges, and apple added the disable roaming option.
I used to live there (Score:5, Informative)
You have to manually turn off roaming (most phones still have that setting - the carriers have only eliminated the force-roam setting). That guarantees the phone will not hop onto a Canadian tower. Only after you've crossed into Canada and the phone (still not roaming) loses signal do you turn roaming back on. That guarantees you'll be using the U.S. towers for as long as possible.
Generally anybody who regularly crosses into Canada or plans to spend some time there gets a Canadian roaming option. On my carrier 8 years ago (Sprint) it was $5 extra a month, and knocked calls down to $0.25/min and no charge for Canadian roaming data as long as I stayed within my normal roaming limit (less than 20% or so of my total monthly data usage). That actually turned out to be cheaper than getting a second Canadian cell phone (as hard as it is to believe, their carriers are worse than the U.S. carriers). People who live on the U.S. side and never crossed into Canada during the roaming periods used to be able to get the charges removed with a simple call to customer service complaining they were charged for Canadian roaming when they never went to Canada. But a few months before I moved away, I got a letter saying they would be discontinuing this courtesy and I would just have to disable roaming on my phone if I did not want to be charged international roaming, or buy the Canada roaming option (which I already had).
Switching of roaming does not always help (Score:3)
That's what you get (Score:4, Insightful)
Friends don't let friends use AT&T (Score:3)
AT&T is the company that tried to bill me for $thousands of dollars for a few hours of international calls while on their "no worries" international calling plan, that should have cost about $25.
MetroPCS has a $5/month flat rate international call plan.
AT&T is the company that tried to get my son to pay $600 for a contract on a phone he never purchased. (He started to buy, then I declined to co-sign because of the $thousands of dollars AT&T had just tried to get me to pay)
AT&T is pretty much the definition of evil in my book.
thats why i abandoned ATT a long time ago (Score:3)
Death Star (Score:2)
You know AT&T's logo looks like the Death Star for a reason!
That's got to be the best article combination ever (Score:2)
On the same page at the same time, "AT&T To Use Phone Geolocation To Prevent Credit Card Fraud" (the example for which was credit card transactions in Russia) and "AT&T Charges $750 For One Minute of International Data Roaming". That's brilliant.
for a more informative data point (Score:2)
I turned on data in France long enough to check my location on google maps once. $44 for that, no "misplaced" charges from before I entered that country, just the actual roaming charge for that data.
AT&T billing is crap. (Score:2)
I have an attorney friend with two AT&T cell phone lines.
A client was disputing billed hours (despite my friend charging a flat rate...); the client was the one continually calling him, asking questions he had already answered over and over...
anyway, on the AT&T website the link to download detailed call records next to each phone line summary only downloads data from the first line, even though it appears to be separate files; there was no way to download detailed usage data for secondary lines.
Thi
Nexus 4 Roaming in Europe (Score:2)
So I'm planning a trip to Europe -> Netherlands, Germany Austria Hungary. I have a Nexus 4 which I hear works well in Europe.
What SIM should I get?
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It depends on what your phone habits are. If you just receive an occasional call like a minute per day or so then just keep your sim card and use wifi hotspots (a lot of shops and cafés have them).
If you make a lot of local calls in each country or want to do frequent data traffic without WiFi then get a prepaid card for each country. It depends on how long you are staying too.
Ting allows setting usage caps (Score:2)
Ting (ting.com) allows setting hard usage caps for voice, SMS and data.
AT&T is the worst for this (Score:2)
I used to work for an organization where a handful of our users traveled internationally on a fairly regular basis (a few times a year). Because permanent international plans were much too expensive, we "activated" international roaming on an as needed basis. Without fail, every month following an international roaming activation AT&T would fail to restore the account back to its previous plan. The plans always ended up on the most expensive plan AT&T had at the time, completely ignoring the corp
You can roam internationally without leaving USA (Score:3, Informative)
In parts of Niagara Falls, Canada, it's also possible to bounce between US and Canadian carriers.
I just turn off data roaming for my phone and pick up a SIM for wherever I'm staying.
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Also South Surrey/White Rock - just last week got to challenge and decline Telus Mobility's $1.50 US roaming charge ('Welcome to the USA!') while on the way to my GF's place.
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Yes! If you ever drive I-8 (Tucson to San Diego) make sure your phone is in airplane mode.
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Or, you know, use a not-shit phone that supports disabling roaming without entering airplane mode. Jeez, what piece of crap doesn't do *that* anymore?
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Long Haired Lover from Liverpool
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Telecom operators do rip you a new one daily. That's no surprise regardless of where you live.