A US tourist has revealed the moment he received a bill of six figures after a short holiday to Switzerland went horribly wrong.
Rene Remund and his wife Linda made the trip last September, a journey the pair had been on previously given it’s where he is originally from.
As always, Remund ensured his mobile phone provider was notified of his travels, by going in-store to share his overseas movements. He said that as a customer of 30 years, he was told he was “covered.”
But while enjoying the Swiss countryside and sharing some of the magical sights of his trip via photo messages to friends and family, not once did Remund think these texts could be racking up thousands and thousands in daily roaming costs.
After returning home and receiving his T-Mobile bill, Remund thought it was for $143 which he thought to be “reasonable.”
“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 realized a few more zeros were involved.
“I look at the bill and I say, ‘Excuse me’,” he said.
“$143,000.00 … are you guys crazy?”
According to the mobile phone bill, Remund racked up 9.5 GB of data while in Europe, costing him thousands of dollars each day.
And while 5-10GB isn’t considered a large amount of data, not being covered by roaming fees will cause a user to run up thousands of dollars 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.’”
Following confirmation his bill was to the value of around $143,000.00 — Remund hired a lawyer to argue the fact he was “covered” for international roaming to avoid such “exorbitant” charges.
His lawyer issued a letter to the president of T-Mobile, for which no reply was given until just 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 phone bill.
In an email issued to local media Scripps News Tampa, T-Mobile 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.”
Last year, Melbourne activist and author Sally Rugg was slapped with a little over $720.00 fee two minutes after she touched down in London.