Family On Vacation Hit With $13,000 Phone Bill For 30 Minutes Of Internet Usage

We’ve all known that roaming charges can get very expensive, which is why it is generally advised that unless you subscribe to a data roaming plan that you turn off data roaming or even data entirely while you’re overseas to avoid accidental usage. Unfortunately for the Chung family, that didn’t exactly go the way they intended.

In a report from ABC7, the family went to Vietnam for their annual family reunion. Ahead of the trip, they had planned to keep their phones in airplane mode to disable potential roaming fees, but upon coming home, they realized that they had been hit with a $13,470 bill for what Vivian Chung (the mother of the family) estimates was 30 minutes of usage at best when their flight was coming in over Vietnam.

The bill was racked up by the son, Nicholas Chung, who claims that his phone was in airplane mode, although we admits that he was playing games on his phone during the entire flight. T-Mobile claims that Nicholas might have downloaded a movie or music, which they insisted he didn’t. The carrier then decided to lower the bill to $3,800, but the Chung family felt that it was still unfair considering that they did not use any data.

However the good news is that it looks like when ABC7 decided to investigate the matter and reached out to T-Mobile, the company ultimately decided to waive the remaining charges entirely.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: iOS, iPhone, Social Hit, T-Mobile, Vietnam