UK Girl Handed $5,700 Roaming Bill After Vacation in NYC
Talk about bill shock.
One of the most inconvenient things about traveling abroad is that you can't use your phone. Unless you're willing to pay hefty roaming charges, you're better off buying a local SIM card or not using your cell phone at all. Unfortunately, it seems no one told 14-year-old Casey Snook this. The schoolgirl was recently faced with a £3,800 phone bill from her provider when she returned from her holidays.
The Daily Mail reports that Snook and her mother were holidaying in New York at the end of May and the teenager was using her smartphone to post photos and updates to Facebook. The teenager apparently received a text message from Orange, her carrier, four days into the trip, informing her that she had gone over her data limit and that her normal £50 bill was now £320. The carrier blocked calls and texts but did not block data, and so the schoolgirl continued to use her phone (though the Daily Mail does report her mother told her to stop using it until they got home).
When they got back from their holiday, they got a call from Casey's dad, who said the total bill was £3,800. Casey's mum doesn't understand why they received no further warnings regarding the overage charges while Orange insists multiple messages were sent. Not only that, but the company also asked Casey if she wanted to use data despite going over her limit and she supposedly clicked 'yes.' Orange says they have a number of protections in place when roaming, and that they're even automatically opted-in to a data roaming cap that limits charges to £49 for a set amount of data.
"Customers receive warning texts to alert them of their data usage and we have an app that helps them monitor data usage, and opt-in to a data bundle if needed," Orange told the Daily Mail. "In this instance the customer received numerous text alerts which updated them on the roaming costs for the USA, and also updated them on their data usage. Once they had reached the limit of their data bundle, the customer actively opted out of our roaming data cap so that they could continue to use data, effectively removing the in-built protection from large data roaming bills."
Casey's parents are going to pay the bill but say the rates are ridiculous, that it's extortion, and that their daughter doesn't remember opting out of her roaming data cap. They also want to know why they didn't receive more warnings from Orange.

Boutique hotel rooms in the panhandle: 1321 euros
Steaks at McCormick & Schmick's: 183 euros
Using your Orange phone to document your trip on facebook: priceless
When you simply must get snookered by your mobile carrier, nothing beats the data-consuming abilities of a teenage girl. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
But that bill is crazy, how i miss unlimited data. To bad all the carriers are overloaded and thats why its not really possible anymore minus sprint. That or they just love charging overage fees
That being said, why didn't this girl's parents take the cell phone away? Also why wasn't she using wifi? New York city has at least 1 open wifi network on every block.
But that bill is crazy, how i miss unlimited data. To bad all the carriers are overloaded and thats why its not really possible anymore minus sprint. That or they just love charging overage fees
Boutique hotel rooms in the panhandle: 1321 euros
Steaks at McCormick & Schmick's: 183 euros
Using your Orange phone to document your trip on facebook: priceless
When you simply must get snookered by your mobile carrier, nothing beats the data-consuming abilities of a teenage girl. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
I agree that overages and caps are stupid in most cases. But this is a case of a teenager being a teenager. She admitted she got a text that she went over 4 days into the trip and now she's surprised and acting innocent?
Time for the people that sired her to act like parents.
at least she got warnings, for years in america you get a huge bill without any knowledge that you've gone over in any way. It was a total scam.
Got a $300 bill after I met my girlfriend and talked to her excessively and ended up going over my minutes.
Unlimited plans are the way to go... NO Issues, NO Bullsh*t
Still gotta be careful about leaving the country though. If you do then just get a pay as you go type phone when you get there. Then you just buy cards for more minutes/service as needed while you are there, no surprise bills.
That being said, why didn't this girl's parents take the cell phone away? Also why wasn't she using wifi? New York city has at least 1 open wifi network on every block.
I think that overage fees are excessive with most providers, but this case was about roaming vs. overage. Though to play devil's advocate, providers might argue that they plan for a certain amount of load based on a pre-determined per-user usage. And high outliers tax their systems more than expected. Then again, there are also a lot of minimal data users. So I can't imagine that the average changes much. It just ends up being a cash grab.
Regarding overage fees, I really respect how Ting mobile (a MVNO operating on the Sprint network) does it. You can select a basic data package size, with sizes of like 200MB, 500MB, 1GB, 2GB, and 3GB getting set (and reasonable) monthly prices. If you end up going to the next-larger bin, all you get charged is for that next-larger bin price (they don't care if you went beyond your initial set amount). No overage fees. If you go beyond 3GB, you pay per-MB beyond 3GB at the equivalent MB cost for the 3GB package (it's not a lot, $0.02/MB, and there's no upper limit)
However, a $5700 bill isn't even close to "record breaking" for roaming. I've seen many similar horror story in Canada but there was the case where a father was charged $22,000 (yes, enough to buy a new car) for roaming when his son turned on data roaming. More here: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/03/01/bc-rogers-roaming.html