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$3,195.40 in text roaming charges gets reversed by Koodo
Yet another case of a huge cellphone bill caused by roaming charges. This is not like the recent TELUS customer who had $37,000 in charges while visiting Egypt… this $3,195.40 bill was all from texting.
Adam Fagen has a $30 plan Koodo and he went the the U.S. in April for a hockey scholarship. He learned that Koodo would no longer be offering free roaming on text messaging between Canada and the U.S and got worried, notified his mother Nora who in turn called Koodo to verify. The Koodo customer service rep stated it was true, but since Adam had been with Koodo since 2009 the changes wouldn’t impact him… so he started to text like crazy and dolled up 6,000 texts in one month. Upon return Adam opened up his bill to find that it climbed to over $3k and felt “sick about it”. Adam’s mother stated that “I insisted that there was no way I was going to pay this bill, and that they could put me in jail if they wanted”.
Calls to various Koodo reps about the incorrect charges were getting the family nowhere so they took to the media for resolution. Miraculously, Koodo has now reversed all the charges and his bill will be back to the $30/month.
Source: OC
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38 comments for “$3,195.40 in text roaming charges gets reversed by Koodo”
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Wow, 200 text messages a day? Kids these days tsk tsk tsk…
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Wow… This guy got to have a sore thumb! No kudos to koodo!
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I don’t think I could text that much if I tried…I’d get sick of trying.
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This is just a miscommunication between the rep and a customer. Koodo (Telus) should have fixed it right away when they complained. Doesn’t look very good on the company if they’ll only take action once it becomes a PR issue.
I do find it funny that we rarely (if ever) see people praising the services of mobile service providers. All we get is complaining and horror stories of giant bills. Clearly a sign that our providers are doing a great job eh?
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Another example of how the Big 3 treating their customers! They are abusing customers pockets! Time to change!
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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Why should she take his phone away? He did the correct thing and informed his mother. She also did the correct thing and called Koodo.
Koodo gave incorrect information. The fault lies with Koodo CS and not Adam.
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Like Josher said. His mom will most likely not take it away since he did inform her about it & she also called it& got told that he wont get charged.
I am sure if the family never took it to public media they would have not got all the charges reversed & they would be stuck paying for them. Companies are scared that it will make them look bad when someone goes to the media & they will do anything in order to make it seem that they help the costumer out. This kid did not do anything wrong at all. I text over 120 msg a day & i still use BBM & email.
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Koodo sucks
liers for Canadians!!! some Canadians
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Why is the dude’s name censored?
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@ToniCipriani
I think it is must be Adam F.ag.en ??? (with periods obviously removed)
Swearing is not tolerated on this discussion board, this is my only explanation. I was wondering the same thing actually.
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I had a very similar thing happen with Virgin Mobile after I took a trip to the States. Only difference is that after talking to the right person, they reversed $5,000+ in charges AND gave me month free for the inconvenience. I was all like YAY!! lol
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Sad state of affairs when the company stone walls you until you get the Media involved. You would think just out of good customer service they would have resolved this themselves.
Makes distrust Koodo almost as much as I distrust Rogers.
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I took a course in Media consumption in university. One of our assignments was to document our media consumption by a daily then weekly basis. This included television viewing, newspaper reading, texting (received and sent) etc. We had to pool our results. There was one student who sent over 1,500 texts in a single week but didn’t use more than 10 minutes of voice service. It’s shocking, especially to me, who doesn’t send any more than 5 texts every month.
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I’m one of those that texts more often than talks, it’s easy to miss a call but a text can sit there and wait for an answer.
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Don’t forget, received messages counts in that 6K messages, I know 200 messages a day sounds ridiculous but it could be 100 sent 100 received. I average 400 texts a month. Existing contracts should not be altered, and since Koodo doesn’t do contracts (as far as I know), the kid’s plan has been altered and the rep was probably working for Telus.
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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I am on the Mike system with Telus and they keep dropping free services and say its not a price increase so I will be leaving them soon as I found you can only complain with your feet.
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“I am on the Mike system with Telus and they keep dropping free services and say its not a price increase so I will be leaving them soon as I found you can only complain with your feet.”
If you want a Mike-style walkie-talkie for almost free, try the Heytell app on Android or iPhone. Me and my buddies’ thumbs have been getting a lot of rest lately. Texting is so 2009;-)
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This is why outsourcing sucks..
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So now we know how to solve our billing errors! Just call a tv company!
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Typical. Ever since they went HSPA, my brother has been getting phantom data charges on his phone. They admit it’s a known issue with MMS, and even though he has an MMS package, they refuse to do anything about it unless he calls in every month and argues about it. Just this month now they’ve killed data on his phone, disabling MMS, and they’re still charging him for the package. Ludicrous.
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The exact same thing happened to me in April. I’ve been with Koodo since 2009 and I heard about the new charges but I had been to USA in January and hadn’t been charged for the few texts I’d sent from there, so I figured I could still text in the US for free. Also, in my account on self-serve it stated “US Roam Toll @ $0.00Cdn”, so another valid reason to assume I could text for free. Surprise surprise, when I got my bill, I was charged over 150$ at 0.45$/message sent and recieved. Another thing, only about half of the messages were charged. Anyway after a few calls to customer service reps, the charges were finally reversed.
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I’ve heard of very similar incidents, my parents has phones on a MTM account and Telus won’t let them use certain features in plans and add-ons, and they travel to the US alot- my father had to call Telus several times to convince them to add a US package so he can only get charged 30c per text instead of 60c. And even without a data plan, my mother’s phone was leaking data for some reason until I looked at it and removed the APN on it.
The big 3 here in Canada are rather sloppy with their setups and customer protection.
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Here is what I don’t get. I have always been charged for US text and I’m with koodo. How did this guy managed to get free texts. Well, when I called this morning they told me that the charges were always there some just customers never got billed for it. I still have my brochure when I signed up with them last year and I looked to make sure. And the rep was right cause it say plain and simple 60 cents per text. So, it look like in this case the media helped someone who should have paid. Now, the question is what do I have to do get a break like that?
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seriously, 6000 sms? he should have gone with his gut feeling intially.
the math doesn’t work, he must have also gone over his sms package, because 6000 sms divided into $3195.40 equals approx 53 cents / sms.
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Lord, I move out from Koodo cause i got free SMS when i sent from USA in 2009-2010 but last January they charged mo so I changed my network provider right away!!!
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How many people did he have tell about his hockey scholarship
200 texts a day is insane :s
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Due to the CDMA network Koodo customers were never charged for texts in the states or abroad and it was advertised as such. They never meant it to be that way but it was a network limitation, keeping in mind CDMA is pretty much only in North America. When the HSPA network went live that changed, phones could be used anywhere, and the advertising pamphlets were changed and customers were notified via bills. Yes the rep mis-informed them, but I’m sure there’s more to the story than being let on.
Also, If you’re on Koodo and have an unlimited texting plan it’s 45c a message not 60c, so they are including tax in the amount. .45*6000=2700
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It boggles the mind why stores don’t take the time to shut off roaming, or at least ask if the customer wants it shut off. ESPECIALLY in border towns. Our dealer location does it with every activation, and keeps this kind of stupidity from happening. It adds a whopping MINUTE to the activation time, so in short has no effect on anything, and improves customer satisfaction. I just don’t get it… Come on people, half of your sales training should cover ENSURING REPEAT BUSINESS, so lets try to give a s**t about our customers, ok?
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6000 texts ,my kids do almost 20000. She got up to 19875 one month and her phone was in rice for a weekend after going swimming.
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@brianj: Rice, the miracle cure for drown phones. HAHA! You should still make plans to replace it though. Even with the rice solution the phone will still have, what we call, “Electronic Cancer”. Eventually, usually within a few months, circuitry on the interior will corrode to a point where the phone dies.
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Jay, my Palm Pilot from 1998 took a swim in a deep puddle and spent a week in a bowl of rice, today I can turn it on and still use it. As long as you don’t turn it on while it’s wet, it shouldn’t shorten its life.
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I’ve been with Koodo for 3 years now, and their customer service has really gone downhill. Maybe they’re expanding too fast and haven’t trained the newbies well or something, but the last 4 or 5 times I’ve called it was because I was explicitly told something that turned out not to be true.
Case in point: I switched from a feature phone to the Nexus S, added data, and wanted to remove my (old) 100MB/$10 add-on. I asked them to make the switch in store, they said it was done, but all they did was add data without removing the other add-on. I called Koodo, they reimbursed me the $10 and told me they would cancel the add-on. They never did, so I have to call them again and ask why the devil I would want to keep the Data Saver add-on ($10/100MB all the way to $30/1GB) as well as something that isn’t even a good deal at all. Groan.
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And this is why you don’t believe your carrier and have your phone unlocked. Thank you for gophone AT&T
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Only if he was with WIND he would never worry about overages!
Join WIND now kiddo!
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Are you kidding? With Wind you get overages using your phone in the wrong city, let alone the wrong country.
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Same thing happened to my daughter, she was playing hockey in the U.S. and when she got her plan international texting was included. This phone is in her hame and she is responsible for paying the bills which she does on-time each month. She does not get a “paper” bill but checks her bill on-line. Apparently Koodo put a notice on their on-line invoice saying the rates would be changing. It is not necessary to print your account, indeed you don’t even have to view it to find out how much you owe, so she never saw the notification. Koodo offered to reduce it by about $300 (initial bill was just over $1,100.)then my husband called and spent well over an hour on the phone and eventually got all the international text charges reversed but had to promise that my daughter would stay with Koodo for a year! If she cancelled her plan prior to the year being up, they would automatically put those charges back on! The reason she went to Koodo is because you don’t sign up for a plan, it is month to month. I alm so disappointed in Koodo that I will never use them again nor will I recommend them to anyone!
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