Bill shock hit home this week for Telecom Asia. My son racked up a HK$16,000 (US$2,000) data service bill in less than two weeks after activating GPRS on his HTC Magic -- without once being informed how much he was being charged or that the charge had reached a high level.
He did receive an SMS alert after about a week when the usage hit 130k (which means nothing to me, much less a 14-year-old). That would seems a bit late; at HK$0.10/kb, that usage turns out to be HK$13,000. And then the alerts came daily; but with the HTC Magic turning off GPRS isn’t an option. He was forced to turn phone to "airplane" mode at most times since apps such a Gmail, Facebook and some games automatically connect to the internet without clicking the app.
At the very least a subscriber should receive a text stating how he is charged (the cost per kb) and a warning text, email or phone call stating the bill had reached a high level (staring at perhaps HK$500, then again at $1,000), and finally the service should be cut off at some reasonable point.
Yet none of this happened. How can the operator allow a customer to build up a HK$16,000 bill? This was while in Hong Kong -- roaming would be even higher as we see from the South China Morning Postyesterday, when a host for an online radio station had a roaming bill of HK$29,000 on a three-day trip to Thailand.
But it's not over. On a visit to the company’s retail outline to figure out how to turn off GPRS on his phone and cut off his data service, I was told it can't be turned off on the HTC Magic and that the data services can't be terminated (which isn't the case; a manager later said he can do so with authorization; so why didn't the agent cut off when asked?).
Making matters worse was the "option" the agent offered me as a "way out" -- a 24-month data plan for some $530/month, then I'd only owe about $3,000. I must say, the use of this tactic took me by complete surprise. Instead of trying to understand that my son had inadvertently amassed a huge bill because of at lack of transparency, I was offered a bate-and-switch option to make good on the amount owed. The agents repeatedly emphasized that my son had used the service so he should pay without acknowledging he was completely in the dark on the actual cost of that usage which escalated over a short period.
We can only assume the reason for the lack of transparency is to create more business when the customer is caught out. The agent's repeated push for a data contract is proof of that.
The real question is how many others are in the same boat?
It’s long past time operators kept their customers informed of their usage in meaningful terms (not kb but $) and had a cut-off of service threshold (like the EU now has mandated with data roaming) instead of allowing them to keep the meter running and face a frightening bill shock. And for HTC and Android, why not have a way to turn off data services -- there is a button to activate, but once pressed it's no longer active and can't be turned off. Just another way to try to maximize usage.
All this talk of being customer focused and that such activities were a thing of the past is a farce.