Tourist runs up $240,000 mobile roaming bill on Swiss holiday

Rene Remund ran up a $240,000 phone bill for 9.5GB of roaming data. Photo / 123rf

An American tourist who spent three weeks touring the Swiss Alps returned home to a mobile phone roaming bill steeper than the Matterhorn.

Rene Remund and his wife said they headed overseas regularly and always told their mobile phone provider of their travel plans. Remund told local news service Scripps that his provider, T-Mobile, said his trip would be “covered” under his plan.

The couple spent September on a month-long tour sending photos and video-calling home, sharing the trip they described as “magical”.

Remund ran up 9.5 gigabytes of data while in Europe. Although 5-10GB is considered average monthly usage and would normally be covered by his plan, the roaming fees had it climb to thousands of dollars a day.

When he first saw the T-Mobile bill for US$143,000 (about $240,000), Remund thought it was a rounding error.

But in this case, it was all roaming data, which cost thousands of dollars each day of his trip.

In 30 years with T-Mobile he had never run up such a bill. The Remunds hired a lawyer to fight the bill, and contacted local media.

While their travel plan had included calls and texts home, they had neglected to mention that data roaming was not covered in the package used by the Remunds.

Eventually, the mobile phone provider relented and offered to credit the full amount back to the customer.

However, it warned travellers to pay attention to their travel and roaming conditions or expect to pay up in future.

In a statement to local news, T-Mobile recommended travellers get familiar with all terms of mobile plans, “such as international data roaming, before departing”.

Travellers can avoid running up six-figure bills by switching phones to airplane mode and using only Wi-Fi hotspots, to make sure they don’t get billed for using another country’s mobile network.

How to use your phone when travelling abroad: SIM, Wi-Fi-only, or roaming plan?

If you want to avoid paying visitor rates for using another country’s mobile phone network, travellers have a few options.

Roaming plans — The first port of call are the travel plans offered by your own provider. These allow you to use your usuall phone provider, normally for a daily fee. You’ll recognise the automated roaming messages hard-sell, along the lines of: “Welcome to XYZ, pay up!” While you can arrange to have these applied automatically, to save admin, they are often subject to daily usage caps and depends if there is an agreement in place from your carrier and a provider in your destination.

Wi-Fi hopping — The cheapskates option, sometimes using only your hotel network for messaging and web browsing is enough. Most phones will allow you to connect to wireless internet while still in airplane mode. It’s cheap, if not convenient.

Local provider — Picking up a SIM will allow you to use your phone like a resident — many airport arrivals halls now have vendors ready to sell you a local plan. Though you might want to do some research on what the going rate is. The pros include a regular cost and access to coverage like residents. A pay-as-you-go SIM means you will never break your budget. A short-term plan is a good option if you’re travelling for longer trips of about 30 days. However, you’ll not have access to your regular phone number and possibly some contacts.

eSIM — A newer option for travellers, some modern handsets will have built-in sims allowing you to swap plans. No more fumbling around with a hairpin trying to swap cards in an airport. As you travel you’ll be able to select your mobile provider ahead of time, via an app or website. The pros are you can pay a local rate and keep your old mobile number and contacts. You do, however, have to remember to switch plans using the app — or risk a six-figure roaming charge.