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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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Rio 2016: Kohei Uchimura Gets £3,700 Pokemon GO Bill
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You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 05 2016, @04:02PM
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
Yes, but without data roaming, how could he possibly catch all the pokeymans?
(Score: 1) by Francis on Friday August 05 2016, @07:15PM
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.