On July 7th, my wife had a short stop-over at Montreal, Canada international airport.in between planes, she placed a few one minute phone calls to tell the family her trip with the kids was unfolding normally so far. You know, Hi, I'm in Montreal, everything is going fine so far, the kids are OK yes, got to run to catch the next plane, love you, bye.
To my surprise, I (the husband who stays in L.A. To work all summer long) receive a bill from T-Mobile for $2,500! Looking with a magnifier through a jungle of fine lines, I dig up a $2,367.40 charge for Data Service Roaming Charges originating from Montreal, Canada on July 7th. 158MB (that's MEGAbytes) of data would have been sent from my wife's phone on that day. That's like sending 3,000 photos via email
I immediately call T-Mobile, request the cancellation of our EasyPay feature to stop the automatic charge on our credit card, and start asking for explanations.
We'll call you back, sorry about that, yes we wouldn't like this kind of surprise either.
No call back.
The week-end passes and I start pondering the loss of $2,500. Ouch. Not an option.
Monday morning I call T-Mobile back, land a stubborn customer service rep (not from India), then ask to talk to her supervisor. This charge is valid. I ask for an explanation, the content of this data transfer, the possibility of cell phone ID theft, a leak in my wife's cell phone byte tank, something, anything that could explain this outrageous one line error on our bill, but I am being stonewalled. Sorry, we issued a Service Ticket to you once, they said the charge is valid, we can't issue another service ticket for you.
Next step, I try the logical argument: Look, every year we save up all year long to send my wife and the kids to visit their grandparents in France. We know that the August cell phone bill is always higher, up to around $160 on average, due to the text messages we send to each other back and forth to communicate in spite of the time difference. 15 cents for text, 35 cents for pictures. We know the drill. We have it under control. No phone calls (international roaming charges are the killer), we just do text and send pictures, and the summer apart will be over in no time. The T-Mobile supervisor does not have access to my August bill so I offer to fax my bill to him (!) He wouldn't do anything with it since this charge is valid, but per my request gives me a fax number for the Offline Care Team. 23 pages later, they now have the logical proof that this August bill has got to be wrong.
I just hope they don't back charge me for $2,500 for August too!
I am feverishly awaiting a phone call, an email, something, anything. A $2,367.40 credit would be fine. Anyone, please help!
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