After about 6 months in Japan I have finally won my battle against one of the Japanese Corporate Giants. SoftBank is the 2nd largest phone operator here in Japan, they bought out Vodafone operations here in Japan and are growing steadily and are posting great profits. I have a curse of being stuck in situations with phone companies, back in Boarding School there was a huge mess with Bell Canada that involved me and my close group of friends being accused of fraud by Bell Canada to the tune of over $10,000 between us. Long Story. That was settled out of court and then the next one was with Rogers over a $400 bill, which was eventually settled. Then for the whole time I used Rogers there was a continuous flow of problems and arguments over bills with them some I won some they won. I HATE ROGERS BTW.
The last one I had to deal with was when Rogers first introduced TV on their phones. I got the system for free as an introduction offer, used it a little bit, but then the Novelty wore off and never used it. Whoever Rogers being the incompetent idiots they are after one day of having my new phone shut down my line stating I had to pay $500 after one day of use, after hours and hours of arguing it got nowhere and I needed the phone so I paid it and then decided I would fight them later. Next day same thing, I try to call and the computer recording states
"Your call has been forwarded to Rogers so that we may speak to you about your Account, please hold......"
I get on the phone with another idiot, and they say yeah you owe us $700 and then we can reconnect your account, and casual as nothing it out of the ordinary, she says :
"Can we go ahead and charge the same credit card as your last payment?"
I tell her hang on , are you nuts, what the hell is going on , yesterday I paid $500, today I paid $700, what tomorrow? $900?
They tell me that the charges are for the Data I am using on the phone, basically connecting to the internet. I told her I didnt connect to the internet and I didnt use up any data. She says well it says here you did. I realized that it wasnt going anywhere so I decide to use logic on the idiot. I ask how much is the charge per KB, and she tells me how much it is, so I quickly do a calculation in my head and the $500 and $700 charges if used for Data would mean that I had downloaded and upload about 2GB worth of Data on the phone. I tell her this and she doesnt flinch and says "I guess you did"
I then ask her if she knows how much data 2 GB are, and she says she isnt good with computers, so I tell her that its a fucking huge amount, and I also mention that my phone only has 512 MB of capacity to store info, so there was no physical way that the phone could store that much data.
Again the idiot states :
"Well the records show you did DL that much Data"
Realizing that this isnt going anywhere, I ask to speak to a supervisor and of course Rogers policy doesn't allow this. So I tell her everything again, and nothing gets through. So I hang up on her in a fit of rage. After an hour or so I calm down and I think about it again and I decide I am going to call Rogers back but not going to speak to the idiots are account receivable, but rather a fellow human being who understands the concepts of Data and Storage, AKA a Geek. I call up rogers but this time I head to Tech support. After waiting for the customary 30 mins on hold listening to Rogers propaganda, I get on the line with a technician, I explain the situation to him in the words he understands:
"Dude, look up my account and see the data section, it shows I downloaded 2GB in the past two days over a GPRS network, and am getting charged for it and my line has been cut."
He instantly sees that something is off, as he mentions, your phone can only hold 512MB, something isn't right, please hold. As he puts me on hold it I think about the incompetence of Rogers and then it dawns on me. The data was for the TV that I was watching via streaming, and the idiots over at Rogers hadn't figured out how to distinguish the TV data from other data. Soon as he comes back I mention this, and he says he agrees, he then tells me how they implemented this system and they didn't really know how to handle it. He then connects me to a supervisor who apologizes and says that they will reconnect my line, as for the $500 I paid before, he says that he cant refund it but will credit my account.
SO a few years later and a few more battles with Rogers I am in Japan and haven't got my internet hooked up at home, however I do have my sweet new Softbank phone which has Data capabilities, and in the sales persons broken English was told I have an unlimited data plan. So I hook up the phone to my laptop via USB and do some configurations and voila I am online using my phone as a modem. things going good, downloading torrents at 500KB/s.
Later next day get a call from softbank, they don't speak English, and I ask them to call back with an English operator. About an hour later I get the call and its a polite operator stating that I have racked up a bill of 300,000 Yen, which is about $3000. I ask how, she tells me by using the phone data connection. I explain to her I was told I have the unlimited plan, she agrees but states that it doesn't cover this type of connection, and I have to pay by the end of the month. I tell her NO, you said unlimited and I wasn't told that this wasn't allowed, supervisor pleas, she connects me through, go through the same conversation and they were so polite about it but stated I had to pay, I signed a contract and I had to pay. I told that I cant read Japanese and therefore the whole contract and also the staff at the store didnt explain this loophole to me. This goes on and on for an hour and I tell them ok ill get in touch with them soon.
After a few days I get some Japanese legal advice and am told that the contract is void as I dont understand Japanese and the contract was not understood by me, so the law is on my side. I call up softbank and tell them this and they still wont budge, then I mentioned I got a lawyer and if need be I will go to court as I know that I am right and they are wrong. They then change their stance and start offering me discounts and I dont budge.
So now 5 months later I still wont budge, but now Softbank has finally given up and said that they will remove all charges and I am off the hook. According ot everyone I talked to this is very rare for a large Japanese company to deal with as most Japanese would apologize and just pay up , never get a lawyer involved. But me being used to getting shit from Phone companies I decided that this was enough, no more shit from them. Funny thing is now when you get a new Softbank phone and you are a Gaijin, they stress over and over that its not included and also get you sign an English contract stating that you understand that the charges are different. So my little fight has resulted in a shift in Policy that is friendly to the customer, and now you dont get sucked in to all these hidden charges and scams that phone companies are notorious for pulling.
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