I have been a loyal customer of Verizon for awhile now, but after my recent experiences with them I will be switching my provider as soon as I can. We recently went on a cruise to Alaska with our family. Pretty much as soon as we sailed away, we got a message from Verizon stating that all our cell phone usage in Canada was covered. We still stayed on airplane mode most the time, but relaxed a bit knowing we should be covered in both Canada and Alaska. I checked both My Verizon and the Verizon family app regularly to verify that no new charges were showing up. All was well until we hit port on the 3rd day of our cruise. In the span of a minute, all at once we received five messages from Verizon warning us in $50 increments that our daughter was racking up $250 in data charges. Our daughter was asleep the whole time. My daughter was able to rack up charges in the middle of the night, but Verizon couldn’t send us any of the warning messages until 9:30 in the morning all at once. I had left my phone off airplane mode that night and didn’t rack up any charges, but also did not receive any of Verizon’s warning messages until morning. I was curious about what my daughter did in the middle of the night to accumulate $250 in charges, while I was in port and had WiFi I logged into My Verizon and the family app to review her usage. There was no evidence of any weird usage, and the charges on my bill didn’t show any of $250 in charges. I checked several times including when I got home. None of the charges were shown on my bill until the day the billing cycle ended. While I understand that my daughter mistakenly managed to run up the charges, I also feel that Verizon was less than transparent with the information, and at times even deceptive with the information they did provide. I can no longer trust Verizon!
The last thing we want is for any surprise charges on your cbeal1. We can clarify if you have any questions about these charges. While usage in Canada is included with most of our Unlimited plans, usage in cruises is not included. If you have any questions about the charges, let us know, and we'll be happy to help out.
~Freddy
Many apps can run maintenance, check for updates, or other tasks such as keeping track of location in the background, if the phone is powered on (including when it's "resting" with the screen off and not actively being used). This uses data and if you do not have an international service plan of some sort to cover it, will have to pay international roaming charges for the data use. Cruises are a strange situation because of being in international waters which don't belong to any country, so only Cruise Daily Pass covers any charges while at sea.
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