ALLGBMINI

So last year when I went to MINI United, I took my Blackberry with me; before leaving I went to the T-Mobile website, enabled international roaming and signed up for international unlimited data service. Easy! When I got back, I logged back in and cancelled the data service.

So now, flying to England for a week, I wanted to do the same for my iPhone. But … AT&T really doesn’t understand foreign countries apparently!
You can’t activate international roaming online – you have to call or visit a store. But you can’t call at the weekend because they don’t bother staffing that department.
You also can’t sign up for international data online … and anyway, it’s not unlimited. The lowest 20MB/month package costs more than the T-Mobile package, and limits data 😦

OK. I just called AT&T and struggled through their many phone interrogation systems, finally reaching a person who then had to transfer me elsewhere, more waiting and more “it’s me” verifying!
I then learn that I should maintain the data plan for a minimum TWO months – because it might take a while for the international data usage to get billed, and if the plan is closed when the billing occurs, I’ll get hit at their default price (which is $20/MB!); logic might guess it’s related to the USAGE time, but no, it’s according to the BILLING time which is “whenever”.

So now, I want international data for one week and instead of costing me $7, it might cost me as much as $50 😦

Come on Apple, let T-Mobile sell the iPhone!