These kind of stories will never get old. Another mobile user who has racked up a bill while ravelling overseas. This time it’s Calgary resident Jason Boutang who went to France between June 1-7th to see some of the local attractions. He pulled out his Virgin iPhone and started to use a translator app to help him out. In addition for some reason he also decided to stream a Calgary rock radio station and send a number of text messages.
This is all good and very handy but the downside is that Boutang didn’t get himself a roaming data plan before he left… so he get’s home to find his bill totaling a whopping $7,763.70. Ouch! Even though he was there for 7 days Virgin saw his bill increase and shut it down after 3 days.
Boutang says “I opened my e-bill and fell over. I had to get three other people to look at the screen to make sure I read it right. It’s criminal… They (Virgin) said, ‘pay up, every penny … you went outside your neighbourhood, you pay the price”.
Virgin’s spokeswoman Erica Faltous said “We do our best to have warnings in place but we are looking into it to see if there’s some way we can help out”. Over the 3-day period Faltous said Boutang used about 130 megabytes.
So not Boutang has ditched his iPhone and says “it’s a nice ornament”. He’s switched to a Rogers Prepaid device and filed a complaint with the CRTC about why Virgin representatives said nothing to him about roaming packages.
Ouch. That’s gotta hurt.
Via: Canoe
Update from August 20th, 2010: For some reason we received an e-mail from Jason Boutang. It stated the following:
“Hello Kate O’Brian this is Jason Boutang the guy you obivously like to run down because your Article is no where near the truth. You remind me of a ex girlfriend that had the same name as yours always like to pick out the negatives and not the positives so im going to fill you in on whats what. My contract with rogers is a month to month one ( It’s not pay as you go). For the data I used in France would of costed me $420 on the rogers network and when I asked them they where straight and up front with me No!! Virgin run arounds I like dealing with adults rather than kids So thats what it costed me for the Data and to kiss Virgin Goodbye I don’t think I will ever go back. Maybye If the kids are more competent or Virgin and big brother Bell do something diferent then the other 2.”
