T-Mobile Customers: Leave your phone at home

T-Mobile Customers: Leave your phone at home
Our founder, Philip Greenspun, had an interesting experience with T-Mobile while traveling to the Bahamas:
"My T-Mobile cell phone bill came today. The Bahamas trip cost $144 in roaming fees. The interesting thing about this is that the phone was turned off for nearly the entire time that it was in the Bahamas and I didn't make or receive a single call. When I settled in at the first hotel, I noticed that no service was available. To save the battery, I turned off the phone. Once or twice at other islands, I turned the phone on to see if service was available, and once or twice it was, but I turned the phone off afterwards. So the T-Mobile system knew that I was in the Bahamas, but the phone never rang and no calls were ever connected. Nonetheless, they billed $3 for every incoming call that anyone attempted to make during that time and then another $3 as a "voicemail fee" for the person talking to their voicemail system. If the person leaving the message was longer-winded, and spoke for two minutes, the total charge for the call would be $12.00 total.
"One interesting note is that when I checked my voicemail, there were only 5 messages, yet T-Mobile\ charged for 21 inbound interactions with their voicemail system (at either $3 or $6 per interactio\ n).
"I called T-Mobile customer service and asked that they remove these charges. They refused."
T-Mobile officials say that the fine print in their contract allows them to bill customers for international roaming charges even when a phone call is not answered and even when the handset is powered off. As soon as your handset registers itself on a foreign network, T-Mobile is free to assess roaming charges that are typically about $3 per minute. Because of the way that they account for an unanswered call going to voicemail, you will pay $6 for each unanswered call.
Apple iPhone customers should also be cautious about taking their phones overseas unless they have negotiated an international data services plan with their carrier. The iPhone will make periodic data connections to check for email. U.S. carriers have been known to bill their customers literally thousands of dollars in roaming charges during two-week European trips.