This is one reason why it’s always important to really dig into the fine print when getting a new phone service. A T-Mobile customer was shocked to find a massive $143,000 bill after returning from a trip overseas.
The person affected was Florida resident Rene Remund. He and his wife went to Switzerland last September and enjoyed a fun time full of plentiful pictures and videos. However, upon returning, it appeared that their bill had skyrocketed immensely.
A Florida couple was stacked with a massive $143,000 T-Mobile bill
Any person who’s traveled overseas should probably know what’s going on without even digging into the details. When smartphone carriers tout their services, they typically talk about “Roaming fees.” People who live in locations blanketed by their service shouldn’t really have an issue. However, people who typically travel outside of their carrier’s coverage have to deal with roaming.
Roaming is when you are outside of your carrier’s coverage, and you connect to the cell tower for a different service. Say, you are a Verizon customer and you wind up outside of Verizon’s coverage. Well, if you happen to connect to an AT&T cell tower, you will be able to use your signal through AT&T. However, this comes at a hefty price.
This is what happened to Remund. Before leaving, he contacted T-Mobile and told the company that he was going abroad. This is something that he does often, according to the report. However, there must have been some mistake this time around. T-Mobile said that the couple was “covered.”
While in Switzerland, he used his phone immensely, racking up over 9GB of data. Upon returning, his next T-Mobile bill read a jaw-dropping $143,442.72. Doing the math, that adds up to a ballpark figure of about $15 per megabyte used.
T-Mobile plays the bad guy in this scenario
The married couple reached out to T-Mobile to try to have this whole charge reversed. Obviously, $143,000 is far too much to pay for a phone bill, and that’s way too large of a debt for any average American household to pay. However, the service reps that they dealt with said that the bill was good, and they offered no help.
The couple hired an attorney who reached out to T-Mobile. Unfortunately, the attorney was met with radio silence from the company.
Enter, ABC Action News
Upon receiving word about this issue, ABC Action News reached out to T-Mobile’s Corporate Offices. Just days after this happened, T-Mobile reversed the charge on their bill.
After reversing the charge, T-Mobile offered a statement and recommended that people take time to read the features of their phone plans. Also, people who are on older plans should take into account roaming data and calling.
We’re not sure what plan Remund was using. However, we do know that he was a customer for more than 30 years. So, there’s no guarantee that he was using one of the most up-to-date plans.