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Comment by cpwright | Hacker News Reader

I think the title understates one issue and overstates another.

He had a $750 bill, because he had no data package. They were willing to settle it after the fact for the $30 15MB data package; which seems fairly reasonable.

On the other hand, it seems that at the end he claims, and I don't know if it is true or not; that AT&T didn't bill him for his US usage for the hour prior; and then dumped all that into one bucket at the higher rate. I think this is a serious thing that really matters; if they are charging you for international data that is not actually international that is (in my mind) fraud. Proving that, is probably next to impossible for an individual.

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$30 for 15MB of generic mobile phone data is insane.

I think you're right on the money on the second point. How easy/reliable is it for someone to turn off data roaming? I wouldn't be surprised if even mobile operators were confused over what exactly constitutes data roaming in some areas.

The telecommunications industry's monetization plan has often been about creating esoteric plan restrictions, charging customers up the wazoo when they violate these restrictions, while not giving customers effective tools for monitoring or managing their usage.

Note that the GP mistyped and it's actually 120MB for $30 (it's in one of the pictures of his text messages). Still not exactly reasonable, but at least not quite so outrageous.

I'm in England. I get "unlimited" 3g through GiffGaff for £15 per month (that is the transitional price from an earlier £12 per month to the new £18 or £20 per month).

You're specifically not allowed to tether using this plan and it's smart phones only - tablets, dongles, etc are not covered. I use over 10 GB of 3g data each month and they haven't complained.

So, 120 MB for $30 (£20) per month sounds pretty steep to me.

It could very well be that they only charge by intervals of 30$/GB; meaning the minimum that they are willing to charge is 30$ but he could have used up to one gig.

It's common enough for U.S. Carriers to do this.

No comment on whether that's a fair price.

Does that £15 per month cover international use? That's the reason why it was so steep for the author.

Not currently.

However roaming charges within the European Union are currently regulated to a maximum of €0.20 ($0.23) per MB. So a 120MB plan would be €24 ($27.32). That being said, if it isn't delayed by a future proposal, all roaming charges within the EU will be abolished on December 15th, 2015. True international roaming will still be ridiculously expensive, no doubt.

EDIT: My numbers don't include VAT (which is 20% in the UK) - so it's actually currently more expensive in the EU than in the example given in the post.

But the EU price you quote is the legal maximum they can charge you without any package. So that $ 27.32 is the EU equivalent of the $ 750 that's in the post title. (And I think the US price also does not include VAT since, just like Europe, it varies by state)

I'm in the US, but I keep a cheap T-Mobile plan with unlimited international data for when I'm traveling abroad.

Living close to the Canada US border this happens all the time.

Op could have been at the border for an hour in the lineup roaming as the line can be several hours to get through at the US-can truck border crossing and/or the peace arch crossing they traveled through, need more details.

My phone might pickup a cell tower in US while in Canada at home and I get hit with roaming...

Just need to contact carrier and explain that you were not across border.

There is a reason why your phone has turn off data when roaming options... For people who don't have roaming data plans so you don't accidently use roaming data.

I'm the OP. I heard similar stories - a friend got an AT&T bill for $1200 after getting off a plane in Europe (from US) and turning it on for 1 minute.

I'd bet my reputation that AT&T is bundling data packets across the border - and that this could be the basis of a big class action suit.

In my case, I was driving northward from Oak Harbor to Vancouver. Roaming was off on my AT&T phone - so there should have been no intl data billed until I turned it on for that one minute.

A roaming clearing house is an organisation that manages the billing between carriers in roaming agreements. These clearing houses exchange data in a common format (bytes per session) between telcos. It's almost certain that AT&T use one for their roaming agreements.

If pressed, AT&T would need to correlate three pieces of information - the clearing house data, their billing, and the canadian network provider's logs. Each entity is legally separate here - if all three logs line up, it's going to be hugely compelling evidence.

It's very unlikely that AT&T is gathering up your data charges and billing you as you go over the border - it would be supreme incompetence at a carrier of this scale. More likely, something's gone wrong at the clearing house, and you should press them for aligned, detailed records. (I audited telco billing systems for a few years.)

But, is it really worth $30? I'd just pay TBH.

I think what he's suggesting isn't that the logs don't line up, but that AT&T may be purposely switching the phone to use the data roaming opportunity. Even though carriers gouge each other horribly on roaming, the marginal profit may be even more to the consumer. If this is true, it would be a scandal.

OP sounded pretty sure, but I'm skeptical.

I have the same issue. In-laws have a business in a small town north of Port Huron which is across the lake from Canada.

With nothing between the town and Canada but the lake, often my phone would randomly switch between AT&T or Rogers. I'll get hit with insanely expensive roaming charges without realizing it. Not till the phone switches back to ATT and I get a text message. That requires me to call ATT and deal with it.

It's such a headache that I just turn off the phone when I go there. My in-laws and all their friends in that area sticks with Verizon for this reason. ATT needs to find a way to be smarter about geo-location and not just randomly switch around when one is near the border.

Turn off data roaming.

Can't you just go into the mobile network settings and manually select a network instead of leaving it on auto?

> My in-laws and all their friends in that area sticks with Verizon for this reason.

How does that help? My Verizon phone used to roam onto Canadian networks if I got too close to the border.

> ATT needs to find a way to be smarter about geo-location and not just randomly switch around when one is near the border.

No kidding. It's not like they don't know exactly where you are.

In terms of international data roaming for a US customer, I've actually found AT&T quite reasonable. On a recent trip, I subscribed to the 120MB for $30 package which actually works pretty well for me rather than doing a lot of fussing around with local SIM cards.

But I suddenly get a warning message that I'm over $100 usage. I call AT&T. What had happened was that because of weather I had flown out early prior to my scheduled start of service. The AT&T rep was very friendly and back-dated by service start. Exactly the way to handle it. No complaints.

(On another trip I got a fairly large bill because of a big download I didn't mean to make. But that was really on me and I more blame the app maker for not warning me that I was making a 250MB download on 3G.)

I was surprised as well. This looked exactly like how banks used to resolve transactions out of order to maximize fees. (And would spot you the overdraft for a modest fee; the practice got egregious enough congress got involved.)

Hopefully this isn't a widespread practice, but I could imagine it easily be part of the shenanigans regularly played.

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