Man charged $28,000 for using data card, Slingbox to watch football game

While waiting for a Caribbean cruise liner to set sail from the Port of Miami last November, a Chicago native with an AT&T wireless card and Slingbox decided to catch the Bears vs. Lions football game on his laptop. The end result? A $28,067.31 bill from for international data charges, despite the ship never leaving the harbor. Apparently the card was picking up a signal it shouldn't have, and while the bill was eventually dropped to $290.65 after a considerable number of calls to customer service, let that be a warning to mobile users traveling on the fringe of international roaming areas -- and in case you were wondering, the Bears ended up winning 27 to 23.

[Via The Register]

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 24th 2009 8:22PM]

You're absolutely right, the towers from Jost Van Dyke or Tortola would reach to the East side of St. Thomas, and sometimes even shower the whole of St. John.

Now, it doesn't happen half as much as it used to...

Especially since we have stronger 3G signals now :D

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 24th 2009 5:33PM]

Da' Bears.

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 25th 2009 11:08AM]

From my own bloody experience that happened two weeks ago in Key West, FL, I can tell it is TOTALLY ATT's fault, at least their terrible network infrastructure and system.

I was on a cruise ship too. The ship arrived in Key West, Florida (United States, right?) and docked there for that whole day. Then my Iphone changed back to "AT&T 3G" from "Carrier At Sea" . I was very careful for not getting a bite by AT&T, so I restarted my phone before I started to use it. While I used my phone both in the town on the ship, I cheked frequently to make sure it was 100% on AT&T domestic towers (as regular customer, I can only tell that by its label aside the signal bars, right?).

Anyway, after I got home, I was informed that I had about $850 international roaming data charges!!!! what a ridiculous wireless provider? I can not imagine how local people in Key West to get a iphone in Key West, FL.

The bottom line, as you may know, iphone has a feature to let you turn off roaming. That feature in my phone is absolutlly always off no matter what. So it shouldn't let me use the data if the phone was picking up any signals other than ATT's domestic ones.

Anyway, hours calling to their customer service (5 times) finally solved the issue, and it was really painful to prove that my phone was not on a international tower. Luckily, I made a phone call to my home that day. They can tell that was made in Key West, FL.

BTW, their customer representative varies a lot in term of helping their customer. the latter ones were really good and helpful to me. However, the first one was extremely mean to me. He wasn't willing to listen to me and just asked me to pay the money, otherwise to disconeect my data. I hate that guy and he shouldn't be there at all.

Jut be alert when you get close to a cruise ship and suddenly want to your ATT cell phone!!!

What a heart attacking surprise that you can get from ATT, particullar after a wonderful trip!

[no6969el Posted Feb 25th 2009 5:11PM]

LOL pdiddy is looking at that 1 dollar bill in his stack of hundreds..like "how the hell you get in here? your type is unwanted round here"

[(Unverified) Posted Feb 27th 2009 4:36PM]

I worked for a certain cell phone company and a person called in one time. According to them they were just sitting in port seeing somebody off and they were charged 4.99 per minute for connecting to its towers.