A couple of years ago, I was teaching at Eton in the UK, and needed to get back to my hotel in Reading. I was placed efficiently in an Eton taxi and sent on my way. Unfortunately, my driver knew generally where Reading was, but not how to navigate to my hotel. I could provide a general description of the area, but he could findn’t it (and on top of that, the hotel was on a kind of spur road that was a bit difficult to get to even if you knew where the hotel was). He didn’t have a GPS, so I turned on my phone and popped open my mapping app. I got him close. For the last bit, I insisted he pull into a nightclub line and ask a local driver to take him the rest of the way. I made my driver pay the other driver. Then we negotiated his fee.
When I returned home, my 45 minutes of travel ended up equating to over $600 in data roaming charges. Then I negotiated with my manager over my expense report.
This strikes me as a not all that unusual story. Perhaps your details are different, but I’m sure some people on LinkedIn have also experienced the shock of seeing what international data roaming charges can add up to. So I initiated a study.
I am working with Telestial over the next couple of weeks to gather data and stories about international data use. I’d love to hear your stories of foreign data woe, and gain some insights about your international data use.
The survey only takes about 5 minutes and at the end, you can opt-in to a sweepstakes that may land you $100 in iTunes credit and a year of Hulu (or one of 4 $50 iTunes cards).
The survey is entirely anonymous unless you opt-in to the drawing, and then your personal data will be used only to contact you should you win.
Click here to take the survey.
Thank you for your time!
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