Tourist slapped with $225k bill after simple mistake
An American tourist has revealed the moment he was charged with a $US143k (AU$225k) bill after a short holiday to Switzerland.
Rene Remund and his wife Linda went on the trip last September.
Prior to their travels, Remund made sure to inform his mobile phone provider, T-Mobile, that he was going overseas and as a customer of 30 years, he was told he was “covered”.
So, with no worries at all, the tourist shared photos of his moments in the Swiss countryside with friends and family via photo messages.
Imagine his surprise when he came home to a six-figure bill, after he racked up thousands and thousands of dollars in daily roaming costs.
“I get this T-Mobile bill and it doesn’t bother me very much because I was reading $143,” he explained, adding it wasn’t until he went to pay the bill that he realised a few more zeros were involved.
“I look at the bill and I say, ‘excuse me’,” he said.
“$143,000 … are you guys crazy?”
According to the bill, Remund had racked up 9.5 gigabytes of data while in Europe, which cost him thousands of dollars each day. While it wasn't a huge amount of data, not being covered by roaming fees will cause a user to run up a huge bill very quickly.
“I called [T-Mobile] and the girl put me on hold for a while,” he explained.
“She said let me check this out and I’ll get back to you. She gets back and says, yeah this is a good bill.
“I said, ‘what do you mean it’s a good bill?’ And she says ‘well, this is what you owe’.
“I said ‘you’re kidding me … you’re crazy’.”
After confirming that his bill was in fact AU$225,000, Remund hired a lawyer to argue the fact that he was covered for international roaming.
His lawyer issued a letter to the president of T-Mobile, and they only received a reply a few days ago.
The letter from T-Mobile allegedly said that the service provider was “sorry” for the charges, and that Remund would receive a “credit” to eliminate the entire bill.
In an email shared to local media Scripps News Tampa, the mobile phone provider said that customers should always “check the travel features of their plan, such as international data roaming, before departing”.
“If a customer is on an older plan that doesn’t include international roaming for data and calling, they’ll need to make sure they’re using aeroplane mode and wi-fi when using data to be certain the device doesn’t connect to an international network.”
Images: ABC Action News