Badly set up iPhone contract chews through $6 per MB
It's not all fun and games at the PC Doc HQ as a badly set up iPhone chews through cash at the rate of $6 per MB.
The iPhone in question is hooked up to Orange in the UK. It's not attached to a contract but instead on a Pay As You Go. There are a number of plans available, but the upshot of it is that once registered, there's a monthly data allowance of 250MB. Not a massive amount, but ideal for a situation where I have access to WiFi most of the time, and several other data plans (though dongles and other handsets).
Note: This isn't my handset, but the handset of a team member.
OK, so this handset was purchased on April 16th, and set up according to all the instructions. Basically, it worked.
Until the other day (Thursday, 29th April to be exact), we noticed how the handset stated burning through credit at a heck of a rate when using 3G. Not good.
A call to customer services showed that while the handset was set up so that it would work, the right data plan wasn't tied to the handset. It turned out that 3G data rates were set at an eye-watering $6 (£4) per MB!!! We were assured that the problem would be fixed shortly and we could resume surfing the web using 3G ...
Cut a long story short, five days later, and many more customer service phone calls, and the handset is still set to the wrong data plan. We keep being reassured that the problem will be fixed in 12/24/48/72 hours (how long it would take to fix varied, and seems to be inversely proportional to how urgent we can make the support call sound - and so far all estimates have been total nonsense).
I used to be a contract customer with Orange in the UK several years ago, and while I can't be bothered to rehash the whole incident that caused me to stop being a customer, I will say that I became very used to being lied to mis-spoken to by customer services drones.
Moral of the story - Just because you've been told something, you can't assume that it's true. Check, check, and check again. Oh, and learn to be persistent (and patient!) when dealing with customer services drones!