Users are finding out the hard way why T-Mobile says you need to have a data play in order to have the T-Mobile G1. One user traveled abroad and ended up racking up a $102.85 bill while data roaming. The big twist here is the fact that he had turned off roaming data sync and 3G completely.
Apparently after getting back from a trip to the UK, he gave T-Mobile a call and spoke with several customer service representatives until a supervisor explained the situation. The G1 always accesses the Internet, even when the Internet services are turned off; the G1 will reach out for sending text messages or even placing calls. In the end the customer service supervisor said, “the phone should have been left in the USA to avoid these charges.”
It comes as no surprise that at no time this was mentioned during the phone call placed to enable international calling on his plan. The representatives only stated that he would be charged $10 for every MB of data used and that if he simply stayed off the Internet than he would have no problem. He was being charged about $.15 every 3-7 minutes on average whether on a call or not. It looks like our G1 is not going overseas with us.
W
Update: I just checked t-mobile.com -- under "My Account"-->"Bills and Usage". Then on the right, under "See details of current usage", I didn't notice anything unusual. Five bucks or so over the regular bill, but I did make like one or two roaming calls from Canada.
Here's the scary thing though: Under the usage details tab, I can pull down "data services charges" .. I see no activity, but there are six pages of NOTHING. Choosing between the various pages doesn't show a thing.
We'll see what happens. But to be clear, I am not going to pay for "data roaming" that I specifically told the phone not to do.
and i hope they're not making him pay this amount. How would any customer know that the phone always "reaches out". Upon reading, it seems the CR didn't even know that. I hope they reverse those charges.
Fortunately I don't travel overseas or outside the US very often although I do go to Mexico with some frequency (I live in San Diego).
Personally, if it ever happens to me I'd be willing to launch a class action suit against TMO/HTC for doing this. The phone has an option to SPECIFICALLY DISABLE mobile data roaming so that this does not happen. More deplorable is the fact that customer service reps at TMO don't know enough to give users the correct information.
If this is all true, it's definitely lawsuit material.
Gee, I would hope that little network queries aren't being tallied toward a total but considering how stingy Tmo is getting . . . wouldn't surprise me.
Seems the phone gets T-Mobile US and T-Mobile UK confused and doesn't realize it's roaming when it is... thus the prohibitions on data roaming never are implemented.
W
It seems to me that accessing the internet (true internet wireless) for email whould be the same whether one is overseas or not, but 3G and phone services might invoke roaming charges.
Are there settings I can invoke to access wi-fi only? I will be traveling to Europe in a few weeks. I planned to call T mobile for advice. This thread is disturbing.