Calling a US number when they are overseas results in charge

Make sure I understand. Your son, in the USA, called the USA number of someone who was traveling abroad and his (your son's) phone got charged $3.00/min? I don't see how this could happen.

matthilein wrote:

beggerking wrote:

matthilein wrote:

@Becs g Thanks for your response. However, even though I doubt what you say is correct, this is not the issue here.This is not about roaming abroad or calling a foreign number. I -- and the previous poster -- were not calling a foreign number. I was calling a US number from my US number while being in the US. I.e. I should not be charged any fees for calling a foreign number, because I simply did not. 

if you are outside of usa, any call to anywhere cost money.  period.

 

this is absolutely typical of ANY carrier anywhere.

Well, this thread is about making a phone call from my US number to another US number while located adentro the United States. So, it is NOT "typical of any carrier". On the contrary, it simply does not make sense to charge the caller for a call when the destinatario is outside the US. How is the caller supposed to know? Any such roaming charges are to be carried by the recipient. 

“My son called someone at their US number when they were traveling overseas. “

they are calling US number OUTSIDE of United states.

to answer your 2nd question… if you call someone who is current outside of US, they should know not to pick up their phone…  for tmobile postpaid, text are free so best way is to just text back and let the caller know to just text.

not sure about wifi calling whether it’ll be free or not… when i go abroad, i use wechat/line/facebook messager to call friends and family and they are always free even does video calls as well

might depend on which plan yall are on..

personally my son is currently in Japan and keeps his phone in airplane mode while connected to wifi..all calls he makes are via Facebook messenger to fully avoid any charges period.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/international-calling

We're on Magenta Max, and my child was charged $0.25/minute for calls recently while in Europe.  But they are not on an international data pass. I think it's free if on an international data pass.

@drnewcomb : Yes, that is correct.

HickoryJunction and fireguy_6364: Yes, I understand that I would be charged if I'm calling from another country to here. I'm talking about calling from the USA to someone else who is abroad (but who has a USA cell phone number).

dblatnercp wrote:

@drnewcomb : Yes, that is correct.

HickoryJunction and fireguy_6364: Yes, I understand that I would be charged if I'm calling from another country to here. I'm talking about calling from the USA to someone else who is abroad (but who has a USA cell phone number).

This is bizarre. Can you go to your account records online and confirm the details of the call? Some foreign carriers assign roamers a temporary local number that can be used as long as you roam their network. (This happened to me in Indonesia.) You can give that number to your local contacts so they don't have to call the USA to reach you. Could it be he called such a temporary local number. If he called the US number and T-Mobile won't correct it, I'd complain to the FCC.

@drnewcomb I have confirmed in the usage records that the call was specifically to a US cell phone, area code 253… however, it shows up as a call to Israel because the person with the cell phone was traveling there at the time:

I agree that this seems very wrong. T-mobile support said that they would reverse the charge this one time, but that in the future, we should use Skype or FaceTime or some other app to call people overseas. But again: How are we supposed to know if someone we're calling is out of the country?! 

Same, here just got off customer service. I had a call on my bill to a US number, yet the destination was given as "Germany". Four minutes for $12… 

When I asked for an explanation, customer service was telling me that the person must have been in Germany. I then said that this didn't make sense -- I was calling from my US number in the US to another US number. How would I be able to know where that person was and why would I have to pay for this person to be abroad (as opposed to the person who was receiving the call). They just said that this is the policy and that I could block international calls if I wanted to (which of course doesn't make any sense). 

In the end they refunded me the $12 as a “one time” courtesy but clearly that “policy” can’t be right or legal. 

So as a person who has worked for cell providers, T-Mobile isn't charging you these fees. The other country is. Essentially there is a reason when you go on line it says you have the ability to call 200 odd countries is because those are the ones that have negotiated with your cell provider for an agreed upon price usually with T-Mobile what I've seen is 3 dollars to call a number over seas and 25 cents to call from there to the U.S. 

I get the frustration but essentially if T-Mobile didn't have the agreement they are charging you for it could be way higher. Off the top of my head from playing with the web site Cuba has vastly different rates 2 dollars a call when you traveling there and I believe 6 a minute here to there.

@Becs g Thanks for your response. However, even though I doubt what you say is correct, this is not the issue here.This is not about roaming abroad or calling a foreign number. I -- and the previous poster -- were not calling a foreign number. I was calling a US number from my US number while being in the US. I.e. I should not be charged any fees for calling a foreign number, because I simply did not.