Fido charged travellers for roaming they didn’t use, but is “proactively crediting customers”

This week, it came to our attention that Fido had been charging some customers for data roaming they didn’t use. The carrier, which is owned by Rogers, had automatically activated data roaming on a small number of iPhones despite users turning off the ‘Data Roaming’ toggle. Upon receiving their bills the following month, these customers saw the standard $7.99/50MB charge, often repeated over several days, for using a minuscule amount of data, often under 20Kb.

Apple tech support said it is impossible to actually use data abroad once that LTE roaming button is disabled, and we’re inclined to believe them: that part of the baseband is actually shut off when not connected to one’s local carrier, so data can only be transmitted over WiFi.

So what happened? Rogers won’t say, but it likely placed the phone in the United States using its regular roaming mechanism, and incorrectly billed for data coverage when there was none. That’s pretty bad, and certainly inconvenient, but Rogers assures us that no one will charged for data they didn’t use. In fact, the company told us in an email it is “proactively crediting customers who were wrongly charged for U.S. roaming when data roaming was turned off while they were in the U.S.”

It sucks that Fido customers travelling to the States need to double check their bills for unwarranted roaming charges, but smartphone customers on any carrier should be doing so anyway. It’s your service, after all. Now, there’s a Catch-22 here: Rogers claims that it is proactively crediting customers for the overages, but it’s unclear whether this would have happened had some of the affected gone public with the charges. Either way, it’s happening.

Canadians should also know that they are protected from these kinds of overages by the Wireless Code of Conduct, and that carriers are required to limit data overages to $100 per billing cycle.

Rogers is certainly doing the right thing here, saying, “We encourage customers to get in touch with us if they have not already been credited the full amount,” but let’s keep these issues to a minimum in the future, shall we?

[source]iPhone in Canada[/source]