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posted by janrinok on Friday August 05 2016, @08:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the gold-medal-for-sale dept.

Olympic gymnast Kohei Uchimura racked up a £3,700 ($4,850) mobile phone bill playing Pokemon GO in Rio.

The 27-year-old Japanese, who won all-around gold at London 2012, incurred data roaming charges playing the augmented reality game after arriving in Brazil for this month's Games. After receiving the bill, Uchimura "looked dead at the team meal that day", team-mate Kenzo Shirai said.

However, his phone company has agreed to let him pay a daily flat rate.

It means Uchimura, who is favourite to retain his title, will be charged 3000 yen (£22) per day for mobile use abroad instead of the 500,000 yen (£3,700) he thought he would have to pay.

"I really lucked out," the six-time all-around world champion told Japan's Kyodo news agency.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @08:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @08:20AM (#384418)

    How many ordinary folk will go to debtors prison now to make up for the lost revenue of this celebrity asshole's unpaid bill?

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Friday August 05 2016, @08:32AM

    by anubi (2828) on Friday August 05 2016, @08:32AM (#384421) Journal

    Helps a lot to be a celebrity.

    A few words from him grousing about his carrier and what he experienced would negate millions of dollars' worth of advertising.

    Not only that, his carrier could not come back on him for libel, as he had the bill in hand, and told no lie.

    This could easily boil over to a multi-billion dollar loss for the carrier.

    Best try to sweep this one under the rug as quietly as possible! And keep as many people as possible ignorant of this profit-maker billing loophole.

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @08:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @08:40AM (#384425)

      Notice how TFA doesn't even name the carrier. Goddamn BBC coverup.

      • (Score: 1) by anubi on Friday August 05 2016, @08:56AM

        by anubi (2828) on Friday August 05 2016, @08:56AM (#384427) Journal

        A helluva lot of damage ( way more than $5,000 USD ) has already been done by the bad press already out. Its just a matter of time before his carrier gets named.

        A lot of sales representatives are going to hear the phrase "Aren't you the guys who nailed Kohei Uchimura for a helluva phone bill?"

        How much would it be worth to that company not to have to explain that?

        I'll betcha there are some boardroom meetings going on *right now* as to how to do damage control on this.

        --
        "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
        • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 05 2016, @04:02PM

          by Francis (5544) on Friday August 05 2016, @04:02PM (#384510)

          The issue here is that they extend thousands of dollars worth of credit without asking the person that signed the contract for the additional credit. $5k is a lot of money in a sense, but it pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars that AT&T was expecting to be paid for iPhones that were using data in the background while people were abroad.

          I'm not sure about his particular phone, but recent versions of Android have a setting that allows you to tell the phone not to use international networks for data. If you need to use data anyways, it only takes a moment to change the setting.

          Also, he wouldn't have had to luck out if he had turned off the data roaming.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @05:15PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @05:15PM (#384547)

            Yes, but without data roaming, how could he possibly catch all the pokeymans?

            • (Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 05 2016, @07:15PM

              by Francis (5544) on Friday August 05 2016, @07:15PM (#384596)

              Presumably just buy a local SIM card for Brazil and a pay as you go plan for the few weeks you're there. I'd imagine that even a year of cell service is less than what he got charged. Even if it's not, you have a much clearer idea as to how much you'll be spending.

              But, then again, this whole Olympics in Brazil has been one fiasco after another, This incident of being charged a huge sum of money for international data roaming is one of the least unusual things to happen.

    • (Score: 2) by Dr Spin on Friday August 05 2016, @12:08PM

      by Dr Spin (5239) on Friday August 05 2016, @12:08PM (#384462)

      I would consider a billion dollar loss a fair penalty for the kind of carrier that plays this trick. However, only if its a billion dollar loss PER CUSTOMER ripped off.

      --
      Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @09:39PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 05 2016, @09:39PM (#384636)

      > Helps a lot to be a celebrity.

      Maybe, but there are cases of non-celebrities where phone companies have made offers like that.
      These kind of phone bills tend to be legally questionable (in places where consumer protection laws have teeth) and really bad PR, and often so much above the actual cost to the phone company that insisting on it being paid does not necessarily make sense for them.