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Fun, Tours and a $3,000 Bill for Hardly Using an iPhone
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9 — When Neil Dingman recently went on a European vacation, he took his iPhone with him with no intention of using it much. In fact, for the 14 days he was there, he used it only a handful of times and had expected to see just a small increase in his next bill for roaming charges.
Instead, he was charged $852.31.
As it turned out, the cellphone carried by Mr. Dingman, a mortgage consultant in Minneapolis, made calls on a European data network several times each hour to check for e-mail messages. Because he didn’t deactivate the feature that automatically checks for new e-mail messages, during Mr. Dingman’s trip through Italy, Croatia and Malta, the phone went to retrieve e-mail more than 500 times.
Other iPhone users have felt the sting of high roaming charges with their iPhone, too. Some, like Mr. Dingman, are unaware that they need to disable the e-mail feature; others are billed erroneously; still others misunderstand the explanation of charges they are given by AT&T customer service representatives. Many of them are complaining to the company or on blogs.
The iPhone is no different from any other phone, said Todd Smith, an AT&T spokesman, with the exception of the BlackBerry, whose users can opt for a flat monthly rate when traveling. Any AT&T customer planning to travel outside the United States should contact AT&T to inquire about roaming plans, he said.
Dave Stolte did that before taking his iPhone with him on a two-week trip to Ireland and England in July. He signed up for a roaming plan, but he said the customer service representative’s explanation of the charges was unclear. His bill was $3,000.
When he was offered a $100 credit, Mr. Stolte said he felt insulted, and he sent letters to the chief executives of AT&T and Apple. The story of his bill quickly spread around the Internet. Before long, he was given a full credit.
“I can’t image AT&T would expect all their customers to be technicians and say, ‘O.K., if I go to use Google maps, how many kilobytes am I transferring?’ ” asked Mr. Stolte, a Web designer who lives in Temecula, Calif.
In July, Aaron Oxley took his iPhone with him to London, Dubai and Bangkok. Mr. Oxley said in an e-mail message that he was aware that there would be international roaming data charges, so he always made sure he was in an area with free Wi-Fi when he used his iPhone to access the Internet. But when Mr. Oxley’s AT&T bill arrived, the data charges totaled $300.
When Mr. Oxley called AT&T, he was told that even though he was using Wi-Fi, there was still a data transfer charge.
Indeed, according to Mr. Smith, the AT&T representative, iPhone owners are not charged for Wi-Fi connections. Mr. Oxley eventually received a full refund for the $300 roaming data charge.
Mr. Dingman said it didn’t occur to him to disable the e-mail feature. AT&T eventually reversed the charges, but only after Mr. Dingman signed up for a $24.99-a-month global data plan.
AT&T is not automatically crediting customers for such charges. Mr. Smith said that each complaint is being evaluated case by case.
