This family’s $78,000 T-Mobile data roaming bill should be a lesson for us all

If you’re planning to travel overseas, it’s always a good idea to buy a local SIM when you arrive. This is because unless your carrier has some kind of data roaming package, you could be on the hook for a crazy amount of money. This is what happened to Reddit user u/Zolsoh when they came home to a massive T-Mobile bill.

According to the post, the user and their family went on vacation. They then discovered that in the T-Mobile app, their bill was listed with the amount of $78,240.61, which is honestly all kinds of crazy. This is because the user was probably not on T-Mobile’s Simple Global plan.

This means that when they’re overseas and they have data roaming enabled, T-Mobile actually charges $15 per MB. This works out to roughly $15,000 per gigabyte which is published on T-Mobile’s website. Many other commenters on the post have experienced something similar with different carriers.

It is unclear if T-Mobile will waive some of those charges, because it’s really not reasonable to expect people to pay that much. We doubt the entire cost of the holiday even amounted close to that to begin with. Some users have been lucky where their carriers waived part of the fees, but it’s really a case-by-case basis and we’re not sure if this user will be lucky enough to get a similar waiver.

So, the next time you plan to go overseas, make sure you check with your carrier if there are package data roaming plans. If not, make sure your phone’s data roaming feature is turned off and get yourself a local SIM once you arrive.