A customer of Xfinity Mobile, the MVNO brand of US comms provider Comcast, had to spend 8 months contesting his bill after he was charged an eye-popping amount for roaming despite signing up for an unlimited international travel plan before he left. The Chicago Sun-Times reports:
[Amir] Yass, owner of Hair Mechanic… tried to be proactive before leaving for Iraq, his home country until he moved to the U.S. after the Gulf War.
A couple days before their trip at the end of March, he stopped by an Xfinity store near his home, explained that he would be traveling to Iraq and asked for the best calling plan.
The employee told him the $10-a-day Global Travel Pass was the best option. Yass said he watched as the employee set it up on his phone.
Per their website, Xfinity Mobile’s Global Travel Pass places no limit on the number of voice calls or SMS messages that a customer can send whilst abroad. The USD10 fee is only incurred on those days where the customer uses their phone. It should have been impossible for Yass to rack up enough debt that his service was suspended, interrupting his ability to run his hairdressing business. However, Xfinity paid no heed to the travel pass when calculating Yass’ bill.
The family traveled through Qatar and on to Iraq and didn’t give it any thought until both parents’ phones stopped working several days into the trip. Their sons, whose phones are with AT&T, still had service.
And then they found out about the $23,686 phone bill.
Instead of heeding Yass’ complaints, Xfinity withdrew huge amounts of money from his bank account.
When he checked his bank statement in November, he saw that Xfinity had taken several automatic payments, apparently toward that big bill, totaling more than $10,000.
To resolve the situation Yass even spoke with the employee who set up the travel plan. The employee remembered performing this task for Yass. However, Xfinity only canceled the bill and refunded the payments they had already taken after Yass told his story to journalists. When asked the reason for their billing screw-up, Xfinity offered no explanation.
A Comcast spokesman said they hadn’t determined how the error occurred.
Not. Good. Enough. If a representative of Xfinity says they put a customer on an unlimited travel plan then they should be believed, even if the natural inclination is to otherwise doubt the customer’s word. Treating a customer like a liar, only to immediately backtrack when the news media gets involved, inevitably fuels the cynicism of the general public. This then encourages the widespread belief that all the problems of the communications sector are ultimately rooted in the greed of telcos and the lack of sufficiently tough regulation to force telcos to behave properly.
