Dr John’s exorbitant wireless bill
p2pnet news view WiFi | Mobiles:- Tech blogger, photographer and social media specialist Tris Hussey tested his Telus mobility wireless USB modem and in 35 minutes of surfing, getting email, and IM with Tweetdeck — no downloading movies or anything — chalked up 70 MB of data usage.
Anthony Floyd’s home use with Shaw Internet averages 17 GB per month, with a low over the past 11 months of 6.1 GB and a high of 55 GB.
Jon Jennings, who auto-loads 5 GB of podcasts on iTunes every month, says downloading a five-minute video amounted to 25 MB.
Greg Andrews and his two roommates have to watch they don’t blow their monthly Novus cap of 200 GB up/200 GB down.
Hussey, Floyd, Jennings and Andrews are all cited in Gillian Shaw’s Vancouver Sun story which kicks off with a tale of woe from Dr John Sehmer who, “came home from a three-week holiday in New Zealand to find he owed $1,400 on his iPhone bill”.
Nor, it says, was the charge for phone calls, “except perhaps the one when Rogers called to see if he was happy with the service”.
The huge bill mounted up from data roaming charges on his iPhone. Nothing else.
“Wary of roaming charges when he travelled, Sehmer took an unlocked phone to New Zealand and used a local network SIM card there for voice calls,” says Gillian, noting, “What he failed to realize was that e-mail landing in his iPhone’s in-box was costing hundreds of dollars.”
She quotes Sehmer as saying he tried to use the Rogers’ site to find out what the rates were before he left but, couldn’t.
“There was something about so much per kilobyte downloaded, but one really has no idea what kilobytes are used to check an e-mail,” Sehmer says in the Vancouver Sun post, which adds:
“Sehmer disputed the bill with Rogers, but it was only after the company cut off his service that it relented and agreed to waive all the extra charges from the trip.”
And ironically, “they cut me off during the swine flu pandemic, and I’m a doctor,” said Sehmer.
“They told me I’d have to give a credit card number to get it hooked up again and pay a re-hookup fee.”
(Thanks, Marc)
Vancouver Sun – Wireless charges: Groaning over roaming, June 5, 2009
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June 6th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Ok I’m lost. How did Dr. Sehmer end up with data roaming charges in New Zealand from Rogers Wireless when it’s reported he was using a local New Zealand Sim card? Apparently he was not charged roaming for his voice calls, so why data?
If in fact he was using a local New Zealand sim, then would he not be charged for data usage according to rates the wireless Carrier in New Zealand charges? The local sim he was using should only apply to the New Zealand Carriers data rates and have nothing to do with Rogers at all.
June 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm
no clue. Maybe he was using SMS or something…
I noticed this a while back:
http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?s=e9fff782d573016b8016be39f2e9fc28&t=1529756
“I thought this was kind of cool (or not so cool). If they charge us 15c a text message without a plan, and each text message is 160 (mine seems to be limited to 140 characters) bytes maximum. Then 15/160= 0.09375 cents/byte * 1024 = 96 centes/kb * 1024 = $983.04/MB
If you have a $10 for 2500 text messages plan then it is costing you. $26.21/MB for text messages.
And lastly if you go to the states where Bell charges you 60 cents for sending? It will cost you $3932.16/MB.
Just thought this was interesting since data seems to be a lot cheaper than this. Also from the article I hear that companies “piggybacking them on other transmissions.” I would be interested to know if that is true cause then why do I pay so much for something that costs them almost nothing.”
Bell, Telus & Rogers, the biggest thieves in all of Canada.
June 7th, 2009 at 6:31 am
I would guess that he put the NZ sim in the phone when he needed to make a voice call but left his Rogers sim in it for the rest of the time. This would mean that when his phone downloaded his email, it was using data on roaming rates. Hence the massive bill.
When I travel, I make sure to disable the automatic downloading of email (or any data) to my phone to avoid roaming rates, I would guess that this doctor didn’t consider that.
June 7th, 2009 at 10:10 am
What’s all this Russian shit that keeps showing up from the likes of ‘Kirra’ above?
June 7th, 2009 at 10:25 am
It’s spam: I get to it when I can.
Cheers!
June 7th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Speaking of spam.
I wonder how much of the good Doc’s $1,400 Rogers bill was spam (aside from the Rogers call asking how he liked the service, heh).
June 7th, 2009 at 3:46 pm
SMS (text messaging) cost nothing, nada, zip, zero. It is part of the GSM protocol that allows the phone to connect to cells (phone towers). An example of GSM is the bars on your phone to determine the signal strength, that is sent across GSM for nothing, SMS rides this same carrier wave, hence the overhead for this service is nothing.
SMS has an average global price of 0.11 USD and maintains a near 95% profit margin.
June 8th, 2009 at 5:20 am
sadly, surfer is right