Ahhh, thats the one.
On the other hand, who wants to give a credit card to a guy pays off the balance right away?
Sure, some people will love him. Amd some will hate him. And if he ever gets audited by the IRS I wonder what the effect would be.
I see that the precise circumstances have been explained, but I have my own anecdote. I have an unlimited data plan – but only in the U.S. I forgot about that restriction when I went to Canada last year. All I did was take a few pictures and email them to my wife. Result – an extra $200 on the bill.
This was last December, anyone catch this story?
Verizon ended up waiving the charges. The real issue at hand in that particular case was how can Verizon justify such a ridiculous charge when, had the father signed up for the unlimited data plan, it would have cost him just $30/month. The kid downloaded 367MB, which equates to roughly $60/MB.
The article says he downloaded about “1.4 million kilobytes,” or nearly 1.4GB. So it’s more like 1.5 cents per kilobyte, which is pretty normal (about $15 per megabyte).
This. Who is the money owed to? If you got the bill in the US, then you are screwed in the US. Unless you don’t have plans to return to the US either.
This all seems pretty unreal to me.
Everyone. Although the banks make money from interest paid by the cardholder, they make tons of no-risk money from merchant fees.
Normal? I pay $60/month unlimited data with Verizon. ETA: Although that’s for a broadband card, not a handset. But data is data.
There is also the case of the guy who had unlimited US data, and called to ask what the data rate was in Canada. Either he was quoted, or his contract said, that it was something like 0.02 cents per kilobyte. Figuring that was a fantastic deal, he downloaded a lot in Canada, only to get hit with a large bill because the actual price was 0.02 dollars, ie 2 cents per kilo. He has a whole webpage set up about his frustrations in dealing with the customer service reps who, for the life of them, could not understand the difference between 0.02 dollars and 0.02 cents.
Ah, yes, Verizon Math.
I got whacked by the same thing. ATT charged me nearly $500 for about 20 minutes of computer time when I was in Canada. I was outraged. They allowed me to retroactively sign up for an overseas plan that reduced it to about $200 and told me that it would have been $19.95 if it had been anywhere but Canada.
The same thing happened to Adam Savage when he took his iPhone to Canada. He was stuck with an $11,000 bill. It was eventually resolved, IIRC.
Is there any rational reason for these rates, or is it 100% completely a case of “screw the customer”? Yeah, I know you should read the fine print yaddayaddayadda (and the first thing I do abroad is turn off data roaming), but why isn’t there some consumer protection for this? Are there cell phone carriers that don’t charge insane data roaming rates?
Cell phone carries charge a difference for Data Roaming rates. The reason they’re so comparatively cheap for “unlimited” plans, is because they know you’ll be using (on average) X amount of data, so they buy and set up their network for X amount of data ahead of time.
If you use that data outside of their network (or outside of the “allowed” network they predict you’ll be in) it costs them, and you, more. Now, it doesn’t necessarily cost them as much as it costs you, but the cost to them isn’t insignificant.
As for the OP: Not paying a 30,000 bill could be an extraditable offense. Just because you don’t come back to the USA doesn’t mean the USA won’t come back to get you.
This is what I’m curious about. What’s the ratio of this cost to what they charge the customer.
When I was in collections we would send people checks for a few dollars and then they’d cash them. Then we’d have a bank account and we’d attach the bank account.
$800 seems quite a lot to fool people with. But they can always reverse the check once it’s cashed. Or the check could be NSF in which case they might be able to get your bank account to attach.
I recall a TV show/documentary/news story about women going to foreign countries to get cheap plastic surgery. The main slant of the story was how risky plastic surgery could be, particulary in these other countries done by fly by night doctors on the cheap.
One lady goes to Mexico? were they royally messed things up (nearly killing her too?). Her face was permanently and seriously disfigured. Not surprisingly she refused to pay.
IIRC Interpol? shows up at her American doorstep one day and hauls her off. The reason I recall this was I was shocked that they would show up to do that, and to do that for a business debt and one that wasnt settled for good and obvious reasons.
Now maybe my memory is totally wacked, but thats the gist of what I remember.
That’s not how Interpol works.
Did the question? mark there confuse you?
Well, somebody came and got her. And it was for an out of country bill that wasnt settled.
Did my answering the question confuse you?