(Mike)
Stacey says while she was on vacation with her family in Cancun for a week recently, she checked her Facebook page from her Evo phone “maybe 5 minutes a day,” but never uploaded or sent any photos, “only a handful of texts.” Sprint says she managed to burn through either 600 MB or 4.7 GB of data during that period, and now owes them $11,667.73. (Note: Stacey doesn’ t specify whether the 4,918,228 kb of data is in kilobits or kilobytes, so I don’t know which number is accurate.)
My name is Stacey and I am a college student, obviously on a shoe-string budget. I recently went on a family vacation to Mexico and came back to receive an $11,667.73 cell phone bill, from Sprint. $9,836.46 of this was international data charges. We were only in Cancun for one week and I managed to rack up 4918228.00 kb of data.
I have an Evo and the rest of my family had other phones for the trip (a BlackBerry, a simple Sanyo flip-phone, and the LG Lotus). The rest of my family now has Evos and I have a replacement Evo (mine was dropped and had a cracked screen at the time of the vacation, insurance sent me a new one).
Since I was on vacation at the time, I obviously didn’t want to be on my phone 24/7, so I wasn’t. I was on Facebook maybe 5 minutes a day. No pictures were sent or uploaded. Only a handful of texts were sent. There is no way in hell that I could have managed to rack up this much data.
Unfortunately, Sprint has been completely unhelpful in getting the charges dropped, or at least reduced. Their Fraud department has said there is no fraudulent activity and the phone was not cloned, their High Billings department said that since my parents had activated their phones for international calling (mine and my sister’s were NOT) we were aware of the rates. That’s the problem: we weren’t, nor was I able to rack up the amount they are claiming I did. My phone (which the $9,836.46 is coming from) was NOT activated for international service.
Stacey, have you seen a breakdown of the data plan usage for that week? Obviously you should start there, and try to piece together what happened. You can also search our site for “Sprint contact info” or check out this number to see if you can find someone who will investigate further.
The FCC is currently looking into whether carriers should have to notify customers when they begin to rack up huge bills, and this looks like a perfect example of the sort of bill shock under discussion. You might want to submit a comment directly to the FCC (see instructions at bottom of post) concerning this issue. Whether the charges turn out to be fraudulent or not, your story is exactly the sort of thing a warning alert would help prevent.
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I would ask them to show you a regular data use for a normal week or month to compare. That seems like a lot of data. Sprint said you knew because of your parents then they should have know that you were going with your parents and they should have changed the service to International.
If I were a carrier I’d open up a travel agency.
“OOPS, LOOKS LIKE YOU RACKED UP SOME SURRRIOUS DATA CHARGES SWEETIE!”
/Big Gay Al
I go to Cancun quite often, and have never gotten more than a single $5 data charge for when somebody sent me a text message not knowing I was out of the country. On the iPhone I get a text message from Telmex while I’m in the airport warning me of the $5 per MB data rate, and as long as I have data roaming off in settings, I never get charged more than that.
True, the phone companies charge exorbitant rates for roaming data, but anybody who knows enough to post about it on Consumerist should have seen the many, many other stories here warning people not to enabling data roaming on their smart phones when out of the country.
My opinion before reading story: Tough Crap. You learned a lesson – pay your debt like every other American (or, most).
After: Same.
Isn’t EVO a CDMA phone? No carrier in Mexico uses CDMA that I’m aware of unless it’s changed recently….
For someone who owns a smartphone, she’s not really doing much do adding the “smart” to “smartphone”. You own a device that sprint sells to you as a phone which is built around data and you don’t bother to learn enough about your device to know it uses up data in the background even if you’re not actively on the internet? When I went to Canada, I knew that my HTC Touch Pro likes to connect to data services in the background, so I disabled roaming on my phone so I wasn’t sending money down the drain. I don’t feel sorry for morons who don’t bother to check with their carriers for any “surprises” before the leave the country.
Also, she needs to learn how to READ her bill correctly. Sprint has a key listed for Data usage.
Key:
1MB = 1,024KB
1GB = 1,024MB or 1,048,576KB
One more reasons why smartphones are dumb.
college student
shoe-string budget
Cancun
Evo
what
I have a hard time deciding who to blame here, the naive girl or Sprint.
On the one hand, it’s clearly Stacey’s responsibility to pay for the bill. When you’re traveling, it’s reasonable to expect a certain amount of thinking about what you’re doing. When I travel out of country, I first check if my phone works there. Usually at the same time the web page or service rep mentions something about cost.
On the other hand, even though it is completely legal, it is a shabby tactic for cell phone companies to allow international usage or roaming at all, without asking for permission to enable these features. International data transfers should be disabled, and when you call to enable it, the customer service rep should say “you realize with your typical data usage, this will cost you a grand a day.”
Cell phone companies should really start notifying their customers about large bills. I don’t think they really expect to collect $10k here. They just want to start high so they can meet at $5k.
I would never use my home service if I was gonna travel out of the country. I have an unlocked HTC Hd2, and the second I got to the other country my ass would be scooting to a phone store to buy a prepaid foreign sim.
That said- I think the reason she racked up so much data is because she has an Android phone, and they’re basically connected to the internet at all times. They’re set up to auto-sync EVERYTHING in the background all the time unless you actively disable the syncing. From the way she described it, it sounds like she didn’t know about the auto-syncing, so her phone was probably sending & receiving data the entire time she was in Mexico. But still, I can’t believe the people that say it’s all this girl’s fault because she didn’t check her bill closely enough. Do YOU check your phone bill every day? I know I don’t. Checking Facebook once a day should not give way to $11K in charges, and people should not have to worry about getting 5-digit bills just for using a few megs of data in another country. Companies should absolutely warn you when you approach a certain usage level. slapping anyone with an $11,000 bill is absolutely absurd. If I was her I’d immediately cancel my service, move to another provider, and let Sprint shove their bill up their greedy asses.
So you advocate running out on a debt and not even taking responsibility for one’s actions. This is why America is down the toilet.
As I said in another comment, I agree that the charges are high, but the fault still lies with her. It’s her phone, her plan, and it’s HER RESPONSIBILITY to take due-diligence and research these things before traveling internationally.
Sprint’s job is the provide cell phone service. They are not in the business of nurse-maiding and holding hands.
Hi everyone, name’s Ray and I work for corporate Sprint in their direct sales channel. The 3G/4G wireless data usage is unlimited for a customer only while using it the US as well as in PR and the USVI. Once a customer starts using data services In Mexico, the rate is $0.002/KB. Based on Stacey’s usage, 4,918,228 x $.002 = $9,836.46 which is correct for the data charges. Depending on the setting of Stacey’s HTC EVO 4G, her device may have connected to the wireless network at specific time intervals for a particular function of the device such as e mail synchronization, weather, news, stock and even Facebook updates. Wireless streaming of multimedia items such as YouTube or online radio stations may be the source behind the data charges. When I travel abroad with my Palm Treo Pro, I utilize free WiFi access points for wireless data sessions and use Fring as well as Skype for voice calls via VoIP. I work in wireless sales and not network operations nor billing so I would suggest to Stacey to speak to someone in customer care so the data usage can be investigated and a resolution may discussed.
Shortly after I got my Evo, I burned through 700 MG of data in less than 24 hours. I think it was something with my Facebook account constantly uploading. There are lots of reports online about this, so maybe the OP could argue that there’s a glitch with the phone.
If she didn’t have international roaming turned on, why didn’t she just set her phone to airplane mode (or whatever the equivalent is for smartphones)? I spent a week in Taiwan and because I didn’t want to get any phone calls and have to pay for roaming, I set my dumbphone to airplane mode and just used the alarm and clock features.
Clearly she didn’t realize that using data in Mexico is still considered “roaming”. I guess common sense is not so common.
I think it’s funny that she mentions that she’s a college student so “obviously” on a shoe-string budget, yet her whole family goes to Mexico for vacation. There’s nothing wrong with going on vacation, but it’s pretty pathetic to claim to be on a shoe-string budget, yet have a smartphone (and probably not a cheap monthly cellphone plan), and go on vacation with her family who all have smartphones.
It isn’t the cellphone companies’ job to track your usage. I’m sure they do (I guess) but whatever happened to personal responsibility? If she had done some searching on Google before her trip, I’m sure she could have found information about roaming data charges.
Sprint data roaming in Cancun is $0.0020/kb. However, if she was on a cruise, the data roaming charges are $0.020/kb.
http://shop.sprint.com/en/services/worldwide/worldwide.shtml?ECID=vanity:international
Sorry, typo in this one, correct info is the reply below.
Sprint data roaming in Cancun is $0.002/kb. However, if she was on a cruise, the data roaming charges are $0.020/kb.
http://shop.sprint.com/en/services/worldwide/worldwide.shtml?ECID=vanity:international
I’m going to be frank – I don’t believe the “maybe 5 minutes a day”. Besides, amount of time spent is hardly relevant. It’s all about quantity of data. In addition, sites like Facebook are rich in multimedia content. A typical Facebook session could easily suck down the data given the Flash ads, apps, updates, etc etc etc.
The charges are indeed high and I don’t feel that it’s worth the $9,000 – but they are still her fault. She (her parents) agreed to the terms under which their service was governed. It is the customer’s responsibility to be aware of potential international charges when traveling with a phone. Unless actual fraud had taken place (phone being stolen, cloned, etc), I would see no reason to refund those charges. A small reduction for the purpose of goodwill, MAYBE, but that is something the cell carrier is under no obligation to do.
She was streaming video to the phone in some fashion. 4.7 gigs is near impossible unless you’re pulling thousands of emails to your phone with attachments.
The EVO is an Android handset. If the data services are connecting, and if Facebook was working it was connected, then the services on the device (google, ect) are running in the background and updating/syncing on a regular basis if the phone is on.
I am planning an overseas vacation with my HTC Hero (Android) phone on Sprint. I don’t want to use it as a phone (I know CDMA doesn’t work there), but more like a very small netbook. So I called Sprint and asked “If I leave the phone in Airplane mode (which turns off the cell radio) from the minute I get on the plane, until I return, and just use Wifi – are there ANY additional charges I can be hit with?” Actually, I re-phrased it 3 different ways, just to be sure. And the answer was no. I just wish I totally trusted them…
This is why you do a quick google search on “taking XYZ_Brand Phone on international trips” *before* you leave the country, not after you get back and receive the bill. There are guides all over the place on how to enjoy your phone internationally and not get slammed with ridiculous bills.
College students on “shoestring budgets” don’t go to Cancun for a week, so this is hardly the best way to begin a complaint letter about whether or not you can afford an outrageously high bill. I don’t care that her parents may have paid for her, it’s not the best way to start out a letter. “I was in Cancun for a week” is sufficient enough.
In any event, to echo everyone else’s comments, caveat emptor. That kinda summarizes my thought.
I’m quickly losing sympathy for people who don’t realize that their smartphones most likely carry ASTRONOMICAL roaming and data charges when out of the country. Make sure you’ve bought international coverage, or don’t use your phone to surf the web.
I am a college student, obviously on a shoe-string budget…. I have an Evo.
Aren’t these things mutually exclusive? My shoe-string budget doesn’t include $600 phones.
The HTC Evo maintains a CONSTANT internet connection. People want the technology, therefore they must pay for the technology. Sooo many people complain about the $10 Data fee for the Evo.. and this is a prime example of why that charge was imposed. Even if the Evo is sitting on your coffee table in the living room, it’s connected to the Internet to constantly update apps, news feeds, weather widgets, etc. ALWAYS. I must agree that 4.6GB is a LOT of data and I’m not so sure that just having the phone on would rack that much up. I would suggest this Sprint customer call back into Customer Care and explain.. and explain.. and continue to explain until something is done. Obviously this poor soul didn’t intentionally rack up an $11,000 bill.
I haven’t seen a bill that bad before, but I’ll tell you this: international roaming charges get insane FAST. If Stacey had told Sprint that she was going out of the country, the Worldwide Dept. could have told her what she needed to do, added on any features she needed, etc. Evos are huge data hogs; they can easily go through 4GB in a week with only light usage.
Considering the bad publicity this is causing, I would be surprised if Executive Escalations didn’t at least split the charges with this customer.