A Florida man returned from a trip to Switzerland with his wife last September to discover he was facing an unexpectedly massive phone bill, Tampa’s ABC Action News reported.
Rene Remund said that after returning home he received his bill from T-Mobile. He initially thought he was being charged $143 for sending photos and texts to family and friends from the Alps, according to the local news outlet.
But the actual charge was much higher — around $143,000 for 9.5 gigabytes of data used overseas.
According to Forbes, the average annual salary in Florida is $55,980, making the bill more than twice what an average worker makes each year in the state.
Remund had incurred thousands of dollars in daily roaming charges because his phone was not set up for international roaming, the report said.
Most US customers’ domestic plans do not cover usage abroad, according to the Federal Communications Commission.
Remund said he contacted T-Mobile, which confirmed the bill was indeed what he owed, per ABC Action News.
T-Mobile and Remund did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
Remund enlisted an attorney, who wrote letters to T-Mobile’s president hoping for a response, the local outlet reported. The attorney also contacted ABC Action News, which subsequently contacted T-Mobiles’s corporate office.
The local news outlet reported that the carrier ultimately agreed to credit Remund’s account for the entire month.
In a statement to ABC Action News, T-Mobile advised customers who may be on older plans to check to see if international roaming and data are included.
Remund reportedly said he always notifies T-Mobile before leaving the US for vacations, and this time visited a T-Mobile store to notify them of his travels.
He also told the news outlet that it was a huge relief to no longer be on the hook for the six-figure bill.
The amount of data Remund used isn’t considered excessive. According to telecommunication company Ericsson, the North American monthly average data usage per smartphone was an estimated 25.9 gigabytes in 2023.
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