ROAMING CHARGES

[AMANGANDHI]

Hello, Rogers community. 

Today I got my bill with extra charges mentioned in it about roaming charge for 1 day only. I was out of Canada for about 5 days and I did not make any calls or used any data still I got charged for roaming. When I asked customer service they told me that my phone was connected to a partner network which is why I got charged. I don't think there is anything like that. If this is true then why I was only charged for one day only? My phone was connected to rogers's partner network throughout the journey. 

Please, help me out here.

Thank you. 

***Edited Labels***

[Pauly · Accepted solution]

Hello @AMANGANDHI,

Its highly recommended to Find the setting for Roaming Data and disable it within your phone.  The reason is even though you do not use any apps on your phone when you were across the border, Apps are always running on your phone in the back ground such as e-mail, google play store, google play services, google duo, google messages, and any other apps you may have installed can and will automatically talk to their server periodically.

You don't notice it when you are in Canada because the data it uses is very small and it does it every so often but when you cross the border, your charged for US Data Roaming for every single time an app connects to a server or what not.

If you do not need this turn off Data Roaming. This is a handset specific setting, not a setting on your account so it must be done at the handset level

[fitness06967]

My wife got roaming charges when travelling internationally for different days, even though she turned off roaming and cellular data when she landed in that country. The only usage on those days is for 1 minute.

She highlighted that she has not used her mobile for anything, just for taking pictures of her trip. I reviewed with her and in fact roaming and cellular data shows as turned off in her handset.

Now, when she takes her cell phone outside her home and gets disconnected from WIFI, automatically she gets the message from Rogers welcoming her abroad.

My question is: if she turned off roaming and cellular data, how has she been able to receive SMS from Rogers welcoming her to roaming?

If she received SMS from Rogers welcoming her abroad, could that be the 1 minute usage that she gets when she read the welcoming roaming message?

I discussed with customer service, and they just said that my wife called to voice message, when she did not.

She has now removed the SIM card from her cell phone to avoid any new roaming chargers, but it will be important to understand why she got roaming charges after turning off roaming and cellular data.

Does anyone have had the same issue?

Thanks.

[Pauly]

if roaming data is turned off, she is still considered roaming if her phone is connected to another cellular network besides rogers so even though she is not using the phone to make or receive calls it still connects to a foreign network, this is also called roaming its not just the data part its the making and receiving calls part.  since she received an SMS she was connected to a foreign cell tower, this is roaming too.    There is also a known glitch when people call you when you are outside of Canada and leave a voicemail, there are reports you get charged for that call, but if you  ask the CSR to look up the number according to the CDR records, you will see that it is a voicemail deposit number.  I experienced this myself in the past and I don't think rogers can fix it since it occurs on other providers networks.

The BEST thing to do is if you do not plan to make calls or use cellular data then activate Air Plane mode or remove your sim card completely.

[spencer9]

This is a complete SCAM by the cell companies to make easy money.

Just encountered extra billing for something similar.  Data is off, Roaming is off.  Only using Wi-Fi but still showing random days for roam like home charges and not for every day.  Called the billing dept and the girl didn't even know how text messages are sent and is reading from a "green screen" to tell me it's all valid charges.  Yeah, I've traveled many years and times doing the same steps and never had 1 extra charge like this and suddenly all the extra's show up.

Does anyone know how to get past the front line people at Rogers.  When I asked to speak to another person higher up she wouldn't put me to anyone else to discuss their random charges.

Can't explain why one time you get an amazing person at Rogers and the next time you get a complete failure and they don't even understand the basics of cell phones.

Cheers

[Pauly]

what was the roaming charge? can you be more specific? roaming can be anything, calls, texts, mms, browsing. 

if it was data, then turn off data completely when you are in the usa, even if you dont touch any apps stuff runs in the background without your knowledge such as email, play store, app notifications,. this is how androids operate. just turn of roaming data.

also some apps dont tell you this but they send text messages for verifications so if u got text charges, it could be an app doing it.

[spencer9]

Exactly the problem, they skirt around the complaint and speak in very general terms and blame a "rogue app" on the phone.  Those rogue apps use data even when it's turned off on the phone, same with roaming.  Well if I am using the same apps each day then why don't I have charges for each of the days?  She couldn't answer that and kept going back to her script on the screen.  100% is must be something on the phone as the cause.

Short of pulling the SIM card out of the phone or keeping it in airplane mode and not using it, sort of defeats the purpose of having a $1600 device if they can magically turn on features and turn them off again as needed.

Can't say I've had this problem in the past when out of the country so bit of a shock to see the extra charges.  Then we had the outage last week and decided not to even call back as everyone was screaming at Rogers for the outage.

What is the best way to deal with this when calling back to get someone else and ask for clarification?

Cheers

[Babylegs1]

Even a manager will not credit valid RLH charges. Turn off data, turn off Roaming and put in Airplane mode. The moment you respond to a text, answer or make a call or check VM you have activated it

[fitness06967]

It seems that Rogers is doing a major effort to bother customers with roaming charges.

Yesterday, I was having a nice and relaxed summer walk in a park in Niagara on the Lake, I would not say that close to the border (Niagara Falls is close), and suddenly I received the roaming notification about "Welcome to the US".

Since I had been more than once in this area this summer, I checked my previous bill and surprise: Roger had also charged me roaming charges back in July.

I called Rogers, and they said that this happened because I was close to the border.

What it surprises me is that when I walked in that park, I used my watch to record my steps and at the end, I get an exact map, with the exact location where I was, where I walked in the park, for how many minutes, where I turned right and left, elevation, weather, etc. However, for the Rogers location system, whatever they use to charge roaming to customers, I was in the US?

Rogers will credit back my July charge, but for the recent one I need to wait until this roaming charge appears in my bill, go through the annoying process of having to call Rogers again, explain once more that I wasn't in the US and request the credit back.

I had posted before another complaint I had about Roaming charges in this forum, and my conclusion for that one was that when I am out of the country, I need to remove my SIM card as the only way to truly avoid roaming charges.

For this one, customers within Canada also need to remove the SIM card when they are relatively close to the border to avoid roaming charges?

This tells me that Rogers really needs to do something to improve their roaming charges, otherwise they will need to recommend their customers to complete a Master Degree on how to avoid roaming charges with them, even when they are within Canada.

Really annoying.

[Bplayer]

This situation is not unique to Rogers. It happens with other telecom providers as well. When the signal from across the border is stronger than the local carrier the phone will go into "roaming" mode. An alternative to taking out the SIM card is to change the Network Selection on your phone from Automatic and select Rogers as the carrier. You only need to change this back to Automatic when you are actually traveling and want to use roaming.

[spencer9]

I appreciate the info to change the carrier to Rogers manually to avoid charges. Have you done this yourself when traveling to avoid surprises charges? Nobody at Rogers has mentioned this before when talking to them.

I know in my case I did NOT reply to email, text messages etc. suddenly 1 text message appeared out of the blue. Honestly I was shocked as so many features were turned off on my phone and couldn’t figure out how it got through.

In the end 1 received text message cost me $15 for an entire day. Never took phone calls, never made one, everything done through Wi-Fi and then a $220 charge out of nowhere. Most days I just took photos.

There was 1 day where I did use data, a few phone calls etc and acknowledged that with Rogers , never tried to hide or lie about the one day when I used it and expected to pay for 1 day’s use.

[jjjjy7]

I have my carrier set to Rogers and have never had roaming charges.

[fitness06967]

Interesting, but how come that the US providers have stronger signals within Canadian territory, compared to Rogers and the other Canadian providers?

Although we as consumers always try to find our own solutions to avoid roaming chargers as we learn, maybe it should be Rogers and the other Canadian providers that should improve their signal and their coverage to ensure that their local signals within Canada are stronger than the US providers that are not in our country.

Otherwise, I will be willing to switch to the US providers knowing and acknowledging that they have stronger signals than Rogers and the other locals.

[Pauly]

set your phone to manual network scan and select rogers, your phone will not roam on any other network when you do this.

as to why US signals are being broadcast in canada?  look at TV stations, we can easily watch TV stations from USA and Radio Stations from USA here. Signals do not magically stop at the geographic border, they will carry on for miles and miles,  your in Canada so set your phone to manual network scan if you live close to the border or plan to travel close to the border.

[fitness06967]

Really? as far as I know cell phone towers are the ones that send a receive signals to a from cell phones, so not sure why you include here TV stations and radio stations to justify weaker cell phone signals in Canada. 

In any case, thanks for your and Bplayer advise. Recognizing the weaknesses of our local providers, I will make sure to switch manually to Rogers the next time I approach the stronger signals of US providers in our border, and also will make sure to write down this new tip in my manual about how to survive local communication media companies.

[57]

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@fitness06967 wrote:... not sure why you include here TV stations and radio stations to justify weaker cell phone signals in Canada. 

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The reason @Pauly included radio and TV signals is because they behave in a manner similar to cell phone signals.  All kinds of factors can affect which signal is received by a device:  such as elevation of device or tower, land or water between device and tower, buildings, walls or other structures or items between your device and tower, atmospheric conditions, etc.    So, even though you may be geographically closer to a certain tower, it doesn't mean that your device will necessarily receive one signal rather than another one.

See the link below for additional information regarding EMF, etc:

https://ca.search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=AwrE_xpNRRZjPYsK2xLqFAx.;_ylc=X1MDMjExNDcyMTAwMgRfcgMyBGZyA3...

See also:

https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/smt-gst.nsf/eng/h_sf11435.html

Where it states similar factors to what I mentioned:

RF waves are limited in how far they can travel. The range depends on a number of factors, including:

• The height of the antenna
• The signal's frequency
• The transmitter's power
• The effect of buildings or vegetation on the signal
• Other geographical or weather conditions

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One thing that does not affect cell phone signals is the border between Canada and the USA.  😉

[Bplayer]

If the Canadian signals were stronger then people in the US could be facing roaming charges from just over the border when their signals are weaker.

It is unlikely there is an collusion between Canadian and US carriers in these overlap areas. Just look at the ATT & Verizon forum sites and you will see US residents complaining about roaming charges when they are near the Canadian border. Users just need to be educated about the issue.

[kekzilla]

Something fishy here and I'm cancelling Rogers when my contract is over. Was abroad for 2 months July & Aug. Data roaming off. Randomly received texts saying roam like home about 5-6 times between 2 phones over 2 months. All turned out as charges after even though we didn't make a call. Bill shows 1min calls to our own numbers. Support says voice mail but the one time I used voice mail actually shows up properly on the bill. These charges just say roaming call to my own numbers for 1min on completely different days. 

Even though I've used Rogers for 10+ years. This is enough for me to drop it.

[Bplayer]

@kekzilla Some good news and bad news for you. First the good news: unless you have a phone to pay off you should not be on a contract and can cancel at any time.

The bad news: It is unlikely that you find the situation any different with another carrier. I have been browsing the forum of another provider and it is littered with postings complaining about roaming charges.

When you are out of the country and do not want to incur voice or data roaming (2 different things) you need to take special measures. Data roaming off does not prevent incoming calls that are answered or going to voicemail to initiate voice roaming charges. Those 1 min calls could be incoming calls that went to voicemail but the caller did not leave a message. Have you checked your call log to see if this happened?

[kekzilla]

It looks like at least one was on my phone. Have to check wife's to see her end. They say incoming calls are free though, yet if that call triggers a voicemail I get charged even if I don't listen to it? That seems crazy.

[spencer9]

I’ve traveled out of country with Bell and Rogers in the past and never experienced data or roaming charges until this year. Always do the same steps, never had to go into airplane mode or pull a SIM card out.

I believe the other poster that other cell carriers are doing the same thing so moving from Rogers to anyone else may prove to be futile at the end of the day.

Does anyone know if they called Rogers to see if the can block data, roaming etc while out of the country? That way one wouldn’t get hit with an unexpected bill next billing cycle. Just a thought.