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Huge iPhone Data Bills If You Cancel Your International Plan
If you're planning to travel overseas and want to use your
iPhone for data transfer with AT&T's international data plan, don't count on canceling the add-on plan as soon as you get back. Readers report that canceling the plan before 90 days after the transfer has occurred will trigger charges for data at the full, non-international-plan rate.
One iPhone Atlas reader writes:
"After receiving a huge international data roaming bill for my iPhone account -- even though I had added a sufficiently large International Data Roaming Plan before my trip -- I was informed by an AT&T service rep that AT&T had charged me the exorbitant per KB rate for international data usage because I had cancelled my International Data Roaming plan after I returned to the United States.
"The plan is available on a month-to-month basis, so canceling it when I got home seemed like an obvious thing for me to have done, since I have no plans to go overseas again in the foreseeable future. But the service rep said that AT&T's policy (unwritten, so far as I can tell) is that one needs to leave the roaming plan in place for 90 extra days, so that it is still in place when the foreign carrier finally reports the subscriber's roaming back to AT&T. If the plan is not in place when the foreign data usage gets reported to AT&T, then AT&T's billing system -- which was fully capable of charging me for the International Data Roaming service when it was in place -- is incapable of recognizing that I had an international data roaming plan in place on the dates that the foreign carrier says I used its data connection"
AT&T's 100MB iPhone plan costs an additional monthly fee of $119.99, while the 200MB plan runs an additional $199.99 a month. During the plans' rollout, AT&T stated that both could be added or dropped from users' existing plans at any time, without penalty.
On a pay-per-use data basis, users could pay as much as 0.0195 cents per kilobyte, which translates into nearly $40 for 2MB of data, according to AT&T. "AT&T has worked diligently to provide affordable options for international roaming because the feature-rich mobile experience of iPhone is indispensable to users," Bill Hague, AT&T wireless operations international executive vice president, said in a statement. "With these new international data plans, iPhone users can access more data in more countries for less cost."
The 90 day restriction, however, makes these plans significantly less cost-effective.
Data, as you found out, is the same issue.
This is more reason for people to NEED to unlock their phones. Putting in a UK or other SIM card can result in $0.10 per minute calls to anywhere, and very cheap data plans.
I am surprised that no one has tried to sue AT&T for not lettting us unlock our phones. We are stuck with 2 year contract anyway, so there is no harm in this. Not to mention it is not disclosed at time of purchase - that you can never unlock. I for one will take them to court, if when my contract is up, I still can't unlock my iPhone.
In practice, I've never waited 90 days before deactivating the international plan after returning to the US. It all depends on which countries you visit. In my case it has been Australia, France, the UK, Spain and Italy with regularity, and the data roaming charges have always come through in near real-time. For other countries, the reporting time may differ.
I reset my data usage before going abroad and then generally wait through one billing cycle to make sure I see roughly that amount of roaming data on my bill, then I cancel the international plan. This does mean that you really can't get away with less than about 45 days-worth of international plan charges (the charge is pro-rated for periods less than a month, but so is the data allotment) even for a short trip.
But some international providers hold off /forever/ on sending stuff, like a month or two; AT&T's advice is intended to cover those contingencies, not as something they'll penalize you over.
Most likely it is a bald lie and an attempt to use the iPhone's exclusivity to extend their roaming plan income for an extra three months. Normally you would have the choice to drop them as a carrier-- but of course you have an iPhone in the US, so you can't. This is what happens when you buy subsidized phones-- the carrier gets to call all the shots.
The only recourse here is a class action suit. How can they charge you this based on an "unwritten policy"?
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by loretdo
February 14, 2009 8:33 AM PST
- It is not clear above whether all of you eventually paid the charges. Technically, the plan was in place at the time you all used the service internationally. So if there was a delay in reporting, how did this affect your right to avail of the service and be charge at the lowered plan amount? I am in the same situation, and I'd like to ask if you still paid the outrageous charges and if not what actions did you take to refund/not pay for it.
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