You would think that the head-honcho of one of the US’s premier technology rags is fairly proficient with the latest gadgets and doo-hickeys. Especially those gadgets that he actually uses everyday. You would think that, and you’d be wrong. Kevin Allison, of the Financial Times, has reported that, “Chris Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, the US technology magazine, has revealed he was hit with $2,100 in charges for using his iPhone on a recent foreign trip, thanks to a glitch that led him to be charged each time the mobile handset automatically refreshed his e-mail inbox.”
So, here’s another case of a roaming iPhone causing a major, multi-thousand-dollar headache for a faithful AT&T customer. Or is it? It’s widely known that you should disable data-roaming on your iPhone when traveling abroad to ensure that just this type of data roaming charge does not occur – or at least subscribe to a global roaming plan. Further, Mr. Anderson was even contacted by AT&T customer service to advise him to be careful when using his iPhone in China, as it might lead to costly roaming data charges. Funny, we can’t recall any reports of AT&T calling any non-technical writers to warn them of costly roaming charges.
But, the ridiculousness doesn’t stop there. Wired‘s top-editor had to specifically call AT&T in order to enable his iPhone for roaming use in China, so he can’t even argue that he didn’t know about roaming issues with the iPhone. “He said the bulk of the charges were due to the fact that his iPhone was set to check his e-mail account for new messages every 10 minutes. The Wired editor said that he receives ‘hundreds’ of e-mails every day. ‘This is a phone that I wasn’t using,’ Mr Anderson said. ‘I was simply walking around with the phone in my pocket,'” according to Allison. Right, you weren’t using it, but it was set to automatically check your email. It’s hard to pinpoint who is more dim-witted here – Anderson or Allison.
So, is this another case of AT&T being incredibly callous and overcharging their loyal customers? Or is this a case of a possibly-staged story with skewed facts – FUD?
We’re going to leave it to you to decide, you probably already know where we stand on this one…
[Via: FT]