My wife left for England last Friday and on Sunday she travelled to the Isle of Man (IoM) via Ferry boat leaving from Liverpool.
Prior to her leaving last Friday I setup a $30/month 120 MB International Global Data feature that would allow her to Email and use Apple's iMessage for communicating with me and family in USA. I had checked with AT&T who is our Cellular provider and told them of my wife's travel arrangement and the need to take a Ferry boat across the Irish sea to the IoM and they assured me that England and IoM were AT&T negotiated coverage areas and that the Global Data feature assigned to my wife's iPhone would do the trick.
So, today I receive this alarming/urgent AT&T Alert Email saying my wife's iPhone had incurred $200 in International charges..... Woweee, what the heck.
I promptly called AT&T International help line and they looked into it for me. Their data is quite revealing as they could actually track where my wife had been... 😱 They claimed that my wife had indeed travelled to the IoM but she also had left the IoM and gone to the English Channel Island of Guernsey (just off the coast of France). I said this wasn't possible as I had called her and she had remained in the IoM since Sunday.
This was a mystery to me for a while until I completed some research. It happens that when my wife was on the Ferry boat from Liverpool to IoM she used her iPhone. This boat was classified as a Cruise Liner and beamed its internet traffic via Guernsey. This is how AT&T had concluded my wife had travelled to Guernsey (a bad conclusion on their part, but understandable). Guernsey is unfortunately NOT a negotiated AT&T coverage area and hence the $200 for some 29 MB of data use my wife must have consumed while on the Ferry boat (Cruise Liner :lol: ) to the IoM.
As I had plainly told AT&T in advance that my wife would travel to England and then travel by Ferry boat to IoM and stay there for some 5 days before returning via Ferry boat back to England for a further 2 weeks with family I feel I'm entitled to dispute the $200 charge. When talking with AT&T before setting up the Global Data feature for my wife's iPhone they assured me she would be using her $30/month Data plan allotment throughout her trip without issues.
BTW... my daughter is also with my wife and she setup a similar Global Data plane for her iPhone before leaving for England but she had a 800 MB plan. She also received an AT&T Alert Email saying she had International charges that were exceeding $500. 😱
This is a real problem when AT&T International help line person say to you all is OK and then you find out that there's more to it than they tell you.
We have lodged a complaint with AT&T and it has been recorded to our AT&T accounts so we can dispute the charges as being totally out of line considering our due diligence prior to the travel overseas. The AT&T tech help person indicate we have a good chance for having the $700 waived.
So, be careful and be warned when you use your iPhone on a Ferry boat in Europe. Check where the Ferry boat beams its Internet data streams. I assume the Ferry boats employ satellite communication for transferring Internet data back and forth, and I bet they may get some kind of kick back payments. Finding out what the Ferry boat has or is using for accessing the Internet is not that easy to uncover. In my case I knew someone who worked for the Ferry boat service between Liverpool and the IoM and that is how I found out the Guernsey connection. 😉
Prior to her leaving last Friday I setup a $30/month 120 MB International Global Data feature that would allow her to Email and use Apple's iMessage for communicating with me and family in USA. I had checked with AT&T who is our Cellular provider and told them of my wife's travel arrangement and the need to take a Ferry boat across the Irish sea to the IoM and they assured me that England and IoM were AT&T negotiated coverage areas and that the Global Data feature assigned to my wife's iPhone would do the trick.
So, today I receive this alarming/urgent AT&T Alert Email saying my wife's iPhone had incurred $200 in International charges..... Woweee, what the heck.
I promptly called AT&T International help line and they looked into it for me. Their data is quite revealing as they could actually track where my wife had been... 😱 They claimed that my wife had indeed travelled to the IoM but she also had left the IoM and gone to the English Channel Island of Guernsey (just off the coast of France). I said this wasn't possible as I had called her and she had remained in the IoM since Sunday.
This was a mystery to me for a while until I completed some research. It happens that when my wife was on the Ferry boat from Liverpool to IoM she used her iPhone. This boat was classified as a Cruise Liner and beamed its internet traffic via Guernsey. This is how AT&T had concluded my wife had travelled to Guernsey (a bad conclusion on their part, but understandable). Guernsey is unfortunately NOT a negotiated AT&T coverage area and hence the $200 for some 29 MB of data use my wife must have consumed while on the Ferry boat (Cruise Liner :lol: ) to the IoM.
As I had plainly told AT&T in advance that my wife would travel to England and then travel by Ferry boat to IoM and stay there for some 5 days before returning via Ferry boat back to England for a further 2 weeks with family I feel I'm entitled to dispute the $200 charge. When talking with AT&T before setting up the Global Data feature for my wife's iPhone they assured me she would be using her $30/month Data plan allotment throughout her trip without issues.
BTW... my daughter is also with my wife and she setup a similar Global Data plane for her iPhone before leaving for England but she had a 800 MB plan. She also received an AT&T Alert Email saying she had International charges that were exceeding $500. 😱
This is a real problem when AT&T International help line person say to you all is OK and then you find out that there's more to it than they tell you.
We have lodged a complaint with AT&T and it has been recorded to our AT&T accounts so we can dispute the charges as being totally out of line considering our due diligence prior to the travel overseas. The AT&T tech help person indicate we have a good chance for having the $700 waived.
So, be careful and be warned when you use your iPhone on a Ferry boat in Europe. Check where the Ferry boat beams its Internet data streams. I assume the Ferry boats employ satellite communication for transferring Internet data back and forth, and I bet they may get some kind of kick back payments. Finding out what the Ferry boat has or is using for accessing the Internet is not that easy to uncover. In my case I knew someone who worked for the Ferry boat service between Liverpool and the IoM and that is how I found out the Guernsey connection. 😉
