Sky-high travel phone bills nearly bust house payment [Telecom]

Sep 12, 2009 24 Replies

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Robert Bonomi 17 years ago

Far fewer phone calls, or 'text messages'. A bunch of web-browsing and e-mail reading/sending (which billed at 'per packet' rates close to that of text messaging). One web-page, with graphics, could be *expensive*.

When the 'home plan' lets you do it _to_ any place in the world, it is *not* "all that unreasonable" to assume that the costs _from_ somewhere else in the world ("to home") will be of the same order of magnitude. It's the _same_ collection of resources being used, just in the reverse direction.

The assumption may not be _correct_, but is it *not* unreasonable to expect things to be 'of the same order of magnitude'.

They aren't.

But the conclusion _does_ hold a fair degree of validity, regardless. :)

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hancock4 17 years ago

Correct--it is reasonable to expect prices to be in the same ballpark with what is paid at home.

One thing special about phone rates is that they're not marked, unlike most other consumer products and services where prices are clearly posted.

In the old days you would ask the Operator the rate and she'd tell you. Doesn't work anymore.

With modern technology, it ought to be very easy to have a rate sent to the display or an audio message before the call is completed so the caller knows what to expect. This is especially important where the call might be expensive, such as from 'alternate operator service' companies.

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tlvp 17 years ago

As postscript to what, on Mon, 14 Sep 2009 01:23:04 -0400, Sam Spade wrote, Moderator added:

While I've never tried to "sound like a lawyer," I have (on occasion) added a line after my signature suggesting a lawyer was getting a copy:

| Cc.: Atty. James Smith, c/o Cooper & Fenwick, LLC

(well, names changed, of course, to protect the guilty :-) ).

In general, it can't have hurt to do so; and it may have helped.

Only once did I actually *send* a copy to the lawyer mentioned. On that occasion, my fifth letter after four fruitless ones *without* such a Cc, it *did* help :-) .

Cheers, -- tlvp -- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

***** Moderator's Note *****

Sending a copy to your lawyer is far different that trying to sound like a lawyer yourself. Of course, the person you're writing to might just refer the matter to _his_ lawyers, in which case they'll call _your_ lawyer, and you'll get a bill.

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David Clayton 17 years ago

On Mon, 14 Sep 2009 20:52:08 -0400, Robert Bonomi wrote: .......

Apparently some from the USA are.

The rest of the world seems to work under a different "assumption", especially when services exist to set up calls from the US to save on the massive rate difference on calls initiated one way versus the other.

It is unreasonable to assume that the rest of the world will fit into the view one particular country's citizens (or at least some of them) may have.

The whole point of travel for most people is be in a different environment, and if people cannot grasp that the concept of "different" actually means not the same, then why do they bother leaving their comfort zone anyway?

Next thing you know you will see people complaining that they dialled wrong numbers when they were overseas because they did not use the full International format and demand refunds because of their own stupidity.

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