Travel With The iPhone: $2,100

So here’s a guy who no doubt likes having all the latest cool gadgets, and there’s no cooler, newer, gadgetier gadget than the iPhone. It searches for new e-mail every ten minutes, to keep you in touch no matter where you are on the go. Cool. But what if you’re travelling in China and, as seems like it would be really easy to do, you forget to turn that function off for several hours after you arrive? You get an ambiguous warning when your international roaming charges exceed $2,000, and if you don’t fix the problem (and pay up) by $2,100, AT&T cuts off service entirely. This is one of the worst customer service stories I’ve heard in… weeks. And seeing as the guy it happened to is the editor of Wired Magazine, there is every chance that the matter will not be the loss of a mere individual customer’s goodwill, but a big raised eyebrow coming from iPhone’s target market segment.