Roaming charges on work Blackberry

Dear AsiaXpat,


Just wondering what I should do about a roaming charge I unintentionally racked up on my former employer's Blackberry...


While away on vacation this summer, I was using my Blackberry in more or less the same way I use it here in Hong Kong -- to check work e-mails and surf the net when needing information or generally bored. I was under the mistaken impression that the Blackberry was operated under a global carrier agreement because I had previously used it in Taiwan, China, Singapore and the U.S. without ever having charges brought to my attention.


When I returned from vacation last month, I was released with one week's notice. The company has been experiencing hard times and the notice period was written into the contract.


Since my departure, a rather large roaming bill (HKD17,000) has been given by the provider to my former employer. I got an e-mail today from my former employer asking how I was planning to settle the bill. I have received all my moneys from the employer and have mixed feelings about the bill as I was never informed of the roaming fees I might incur and did not incur them intentionally. Other mixed feelings arise from being released with one week's notice.


What would you do in this situation? I feel bad about the roaming charges but am a little reluctant to pony up and pay them... especially considering that I currently do not have an income.


Thanks for the advice.


Typhoon

If you were supplied with a Blackberry as a part of your work package, in order to be in the work email loop wherever you were, and during the time that you were using it you were still employed (which it sounds as if you were) then tell them to take a running jump and don't have another thought about it.


Only exception is if you signed some agreement about "how and when to use your blackberry" and you broke the rules by using it abroad.


You owe them nothing just as they showed you that they owe you nothing.

Either say it was for work and refuse to pay, or ignore it. They won't sue you for $17k. It's not worth their time / energy / law firm bills....unless they are a law firm that is!

i would check what the bill is about: is it more for phone calls or more data traffic? for data traffic you can always say it's for checking the work information. no way to prove either way.


for phone calls, they can probably check the numbers and determine whether they are for business use or not.


having said all that, i would tell them to stuff it. my BB bill is 5-10k every month and my boss' bill who travels a bit more is 30k every month. it's customary that the company would pay this regardless of what the rules say, so i would apply the same principle

I tend to agree with what has already been said. However, I would raise a point from your initial post where you said you had mixed feelings after having been let go with just one week's notice. How can you have mixed feelings if that was according to the terms of the employment contract that presumably you yourself signed.


Another technical comment on one of the responses: I think you'll find that it IS possible for the provider to determine what web pages were visited.


Incidentally there are different BlackBerry service packages available. My husband and one of his colleagues are both senior execs on the same level for the same employer. Not sure if it's relevant or not but my husband is an ex pat and his colleague is local. My husband travels to Australia quite frequently and has never had much of a bill for internet access during those trips. His colleague doesn't travel that much and when he went to Australia last year for a week he returned with a HUGE bill for the same internet access. I cannot remember the amount but I do remember seeing the bill and there were pages and pages of it. Seems they had different packages but weren't told as much. Apart from the shock to the colleague's system there wasn't an issue, though, because the company had considered it better to pay for the 'lower' package and incur the high access costs for a one-off trip than to pay for the 'higher' package which would not be utilised.

Thanks for the advice. When I was released I was told that "business was business". Perhaps I'll very politely decline to pay and console my former employer with the same cliche.

I think that is most definitely the right spirit!