I got my first iPhone-related bill this week. It was for almost $400.00.
Why so high? Well, during our Alaska trip, I used the iPhone to surf the web, access visual voice mail, and send & receive Internet email while in Vancouver — for one day. One of the web graphics-heavy web pages I pulled cost more than $20.00 to download.
I’m lucky: some folks are receiving bills so long, they’re being mailed in boxes … for thousands of dollars in service charges. This guy got his waived … but not everyone hit with these bills will get national attention from the folks at BoingBoing.net.
Note to Apple and AT&T: that just won’t do — especially since:
a) I travel out of the country a lot, and
b) there’s no way to turn off the iPhone’s ability to access AT&T’s Edge network without disabling the cell phone functions as well.
The best work-around so far? Before traveling internationally, iPhone customers are calling AT&T and asking for their Edge network access to be disabled [link]. The upside? Even then, you can still access the Internet via WiFi connections. The downside? No visual voicemail.
The iPhone is a great piece of hardware, and the user experience is simply magical. That said: even for international data access, these service charges are ridiculous. Somewhere, someone at Apple and AT&T better address this issue … and fast.
Amen!