Father's $22,000 cell bill: Price-gouging or bad parenting?
bootlegga @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:19 pm
Father's $22,000 cellphone bill: Is price-gouging or bad parenting to blame?
$1:
Is a customer’s $22,000 cell phone bill the result of negligent parenting or Rogers price-gouging?
A B.C. man is accusing Rogers of the latter after his 11-year-old-son rang up $22,000 of data charges during a family vacation to Mexico. The father, Matt Buie, admitted to CBC that before leaving on the trip an Apple store rep advised him to switch his iPhone to airplane mode to avoid roaming charges.
Once in Mexico, however, Buie’s son got a sunburn and stayed inside the hotel room for three days, during which time he streamed video and played online games.
In short order Buie received a text message from his service provider, Fido, which is owned by Rogers, informing him that his phone was being shut down for security reasons due to “excessively high” data charges. Soon after the company informed Buie that his son had burned up approximately 700 megabytes – roughly the equivalent of 12 straight hours of YouTube streaming.
Fido subsequently reduced the bill to $2200, but by then Buie was already seeing red. “It is gouging,” he told a CBC reporter.
What really has Buie seeing red is that Fido didn’t sent the cutoff message to his phone until three days of charges. If he had been a Telus customer, its system would have cut off the phone once the bill reached $200.
Which is pretty much all Buie wants to pay. Fido has subsequently slashed the bill to $500, but Buie only wants to pay a maximum of $200, the amount at which his phone would have been cut off if he had been a Telus customer.
And not for the first time the lines between cell phone service provider and customer are blurred. Is there a good guy and bad guy in this scenario?
Rogers continues to take occasional advantage of customers who are unfamiliar or unaccustomed to roaming charges, which itself seems like a rather sneaky and antiquated way of doing business. When new flat daily data charges were introduced in New Zealand, data roaming usage went through the roof.
At the same, Buie, a financial planner by vocation, probably should have been keeping closer tabs on his iPhone. His son made an honest mistake, but his father should have been paying closer attention. Should the sins of the son be revisited upon the father?
A B.C. man is accusing Rogers of the latter after his 11-year-old-son rang up $22,000 of data charges during a family vacation to Mexico. The father, Matt Buie, admitted to CBC that before leaving on the trip an Apple store rep advised him to switch his iPhone to airplane mode to avoid roaming charges.
Once in Mexico, however, Buie’s son got a sunburn and stayed inside the hotel room for three days, during which time he streamed video and played online games.
In short order Buie received a text message from his service provider, Fido, which is owned by Rogers, informing him that his phone was being shut down for security reasons due to “excessively high” data charges. Soon after the company informed Buie that his son had burned up approximately 700 megabytes – roughly the equivalent of 12 straight hours of YouTube streaming.
Fido subsequently reduced the bill to $2200, but by then Buie was already seeing red. “It is gouging,” he told a CBC reporter.
What really has Buie seeing red is that Fido didn’t sent the cutoff message to his phone until three days of charges. If he had been a Telus customer, its system would have cut off the phone once the bill reached $200.
Which is pretty much all Buie wants to pay. Fido has subsequently slashed the bill to $500, but Buie only wants to pay a maximum of $200, the amount at which his phone would have been cut off if he had been a Telus customer.
And not for the first time the lines between cell phone service provider and customer are blurred. Is there a good guy and bad guy in this scenario?
Rogers continues to take occasional advantage of customers who are unfamiliar or unaccustomed to roaming charges, which itself seems like a rather sneaky and antiquated way of doing business. When new flat daily data charges were introduced in New Zealand, data roaming usage went through the roof.
At the same, Buie, a financial planner by vocation, probably should have been keeping closer tabs on his iPhone. His son made an honest mistake, but his father should have been paying closer attention. Should the sins of the son be revisited upon the father?
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/the ... le9264469/
andyt @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:36 pm
You've got to read the agreement you've signed, and that includes when you give it to your kid. Yes our telecoms gouge us, and we should have cheaper rates, but if you make the deal you've got to pay.
OnTheIce @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:41 pm
Father. Be responsible for your kids, their actions and the contracts you sign.
ShepherdsDog @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 2:48 pm
ffs the kids are on holidays....they can leave the goddamned smart phones at home for awhile and interact with real people and activities
Zipperfish @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:04 pm
All o fthem. The father for nt looking after his phone or buying the roaming contract. The kid for surfing youtube The company for gouging people.
More ammo for teh CRTC to step in and take a larger role in overseeing the telcoms. There's very little competition in the industry, and they either need ot be more tightly regulated, or the filed should be opened up to foriegn companies. We are being hosed to the point where, as one wag put it, it should be considered a human rights violation.
raydan @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:11 pm
He was lucky they reduced the bill to $2,200, even luckier when they reduced it again to $500. Shouldn't he just shut up now and pay the bill?
coaster_dot @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:34 pm
Duhh, it's Apples fault...they made the phone.
commanderkai @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 3:47 pm
You pay the $500, you then sell that smartphone immediately, and make the kid mow the lawn for free for the next 5 years.
However, for my phone, which isn't even a smart phone, it would be quite nice to have a way to lock out some "features", like accessing the phone's net service from accidentally being accessed (Because, well, seemingly my butterfingers like to hit that damn fucking button) and raking up charges.
BartSimpson @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 5:26 pm
I'm not a bg fan of kids being addicted to technology in the first place so this rates a "Meh" from me.
Benn @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 10:52 pm
raydan raydan:
He was lucky they reduced the bill to $2,200, even luckier when they reduced it again to $500. Shouldn't he just shut up now and pay the bill?
Exactly. Time to teach his kid about taking responsibility by taking some himself.
herbie @ Tue Mar 05, 2013 11:19 pm
Don't blame the kid. Every single week I encounter some 40-55 yr old "surprised" at their $600 or more overage.
Not one fucking adult reads the thing or understands it. None of them ever listened to Gramma and the TV ads that say everything is free is the Gospel to them.
Strutz @ Wed Mar 06, 2013 12:06 am
Oh well. 
One should be aware of what they have agreed to when signing up for a plan.
He's fortunate that they've reduced the actual bill by so much. Perhaps this story will serve as a warning to others. Doubt it though. As herbie has said this kind of thing seems to happen often.
I'm sure all types of smartphones have the same nifty feature mine has where I can set my data limit to warn me if I'm going to go over the max MB's that I have included in my plan during the billing cycle.
CanadianJeff @ Wed Mar 06, 2013 12:51 am
I think the fact that it's never fully clear just how much your phone bill is going to be at the end of the month because of shit like this shows how few rights we have as consumers.
As irresponsible as the kid was he was a kid. Frankly I miss the days when you had a home phone and you knew what your bill was going to be every month. It's time we had that with cells phones.
andyt @ Wed Mar 06, 2013 1:03 am
CanadianJeff CanadianJeff:
As irresponsible as the kid was he was a kid. Frankly I miss the days when you had a home phone and you knew what your bill was going to be every month. It's time we had that with cells phones.
you do, with many plans. Your home phone sure dinged you if you called long distance, and from Mexico it's certainly long distance.
saturn_656 @ Wed Mar 06, 2013 1:20 am
Who cares...