Wednesday, November 11, 2009
PCCW WTF?
First off, my regular mobile phone is an iPhone, service provided by 3, and I keep the international data roaming set to "off."
Second, at the end of October, I got the Huawei WiFi modem from PCCW. They have an international data roaming plan, tiered at various levels, and I called before my trip to have them activate the plan for US roaming for 20 meg per month at HK$488. The plan says that if you go over that amount in a month, they'll charge you HK$0.1 per kilobyte.
I've been in the US for ten days and have used the modem every day, but it is not my prime method of connecting to the Internet. I suppose it's possible that I've come close to 20 megs but doubtful. I'm mostly downloading email and using iPhone apps that access the net (like Yelp and Facebook and Tweetdeck). I'm not doing much browsing via Safari, though there have been a couple of occasions when I've used the Google Maps app.
Tonight the phone rings just as I'm trying to sleep, so I don't take the call. A minute later, a beep to let me know I have a voicemail message. Curious, so I check my voicemail. (And since my data roaming has supposedly been cut off, I can't use Skype to make the call.)
"Hello Mr. Spike, this is calling from PCCW. We are letting you know that you are approaching your GPRS limit of 20 meg and we are barring your service so that you don't go over the limit. If you would like to continue using the service, we require a payment of HK$3,500. Please call this number."
WTF? A payment of $3,500? How did I manage to go from $488 to $3,500?
So now of course I'm fully awake. I call PCCW. The girl who answers knows nothing. She checks the record. It tells her nothing. Why do I suddenly owe $3,500? She doesn't know. She claims that because I am outside of Hong Kong, they will not know my data usage until the end of the month. Well, if they won't know it until the end of the month, how come this guy knows it now and has cut me off? She doesn't know. She needs to investigate and will call me back.
If they wanna tell me I've hit 20 megs, I'm fine with that. I'm leaving in 12 hours anyway and will manage without using the modem. But where does the $3,500 charge come in?
So now I'm wide awake. Waiting for a call ....
Second, at the end of October, I got the Huawei WiFi modem from PCCW. They have an international data roaming plan, tiered at various levels, and I called before my trip to have them activate the plan for US roaming for 20 meg per month at HK$488. The plan says that if you go over that amount in a month, they'll charge you HK$0.1 per kilobyte.
I've been in the US for ten days and have used the modem every day, but it is not my prime method of connecting to the Internet. I suppose it's possible that I've come close to 20 megs but doubtful. I'm mostly downloading email and using iPhone apps that access the net (like Yelp and Facebook and Tweetdeck). I'm not doing much browsing via Safari, though there have been a couple of occasions when I've used the Google Maps app.
Tonight the phone rings just as I'm trying to sleep, so I don't take the call. A minute later, a beep to let me know I have a voicemail message. Curious, so I check my voicemail. (And since my data roaming has supposedly been cut off, I can't use Skype to make the call.)
"Hello Mr. Spike, this is calling from PCCW. We are letting you know that you are approaching your GPRS limit of 20 meg and we are barring your service so that you don't go over the limit. If you would like to continue using the service, we require a payment of HK$3,500. Please call this number."
WTF? A payment of $3,500? How did I manage to go from $488 to $3,500?
So now of course I'm fully awake. I call PCCW. The girl who answers knows nothing. She checks the record. It tells her nothing. Why do I suddenly owe $3,500? She doesn't know. She claims that because I am outside of Hong Kong, they will not know my data usage until the end of the month. Well, if they won't know it until the end of the month, how come this guy knows it now and has cut me off? She doesn't know. She needs to investigate and will call me back.
If they wanna tell me I've hit 20 megs, I'm fine with that. I'm leaving in 12 hours anyway and will manage without using the modem. But where does the $3,500 charge come in?
So now I'm wide awake. Waiting for a call ....
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Since they said you are approaching your 20 meg limit and not gone past, I'm guessing the 3500 is a deposit that your future usage would go against. They are simply protecting themselves from all the byte bandits out there!
You have used 20 MB in the first 11 days of the month - the remaining 35 MB they are charging you for is to cover the rest of the month's usage. They don't know how much you will have used by the end of the month so are pre-emptively taking credit from you to cover possible fees. No, it's not right, but that's what you get when you sign up for a service that costs over $12/MB for international roaming.
At least your explanation makes sense. Pity that an actual employee of the company doesn't know enough to be able to give the same explanation.
As I mentioned in the post they do have other tiers in the plan. I didn't go for a higher tier because I didn't think I could go over 20 meg in 10 days. Next time I take a trip, I'll know better.
As I mentioned in the post they do have other tiers in the plan. I didn't go for a higher tier because I didn't think I could go over 20 meg in 10 days. Next time I take a trip, I'll know better.
With the iPhone, my daily usage is about 10MB. This includes syncing of address books, calendars, mailboxes, browsing etc. For roaming, AT&T has 3 packages, 50MB, 100MB and 200MB package for US$59, 120 & 200 respectively. It's amazing how quickly you can use up the MB...
Have a nice flight home and hope you don't get dinged on the overweight luggage.....
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Have a nice flight home and hope you don't get dinged on the overweight luggage.....
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