When Ben Sargent went to Italy to attend a friend's wedding and then to Dubai for a holiday last summer, his international phone calls totalled less than one hour. He came home to a HK$2,540 bill from CSL.
Now, Sargent, 40, is probably the first person to take a Hong Kong mobile phone company to court over non-transparent roaming charges.
CSL has some of the highest roaming rates in Hong Kong. Its rates in Italy, for example, are from HK$27.64 to HK$46.56 a minute compared to PCCW's HK$26.90 to HK$33.46.
However, roaming rates of Hong Kong firms altogether are some of the highest in the world.
Furthermore, the charges Sargent received from his trips were several hundred Hong Kong dollars over the published rates on CSL's website.
Sargent, who works at an investment bank in Hong Kong, first contacted CSL on September 23 to inquire about the rate discrepancy. It told him that his bill included rate increases due to the exchange rate, its policy of rounding up to the nearest minute and extra charges from third-party service providers' tariffs, according to e-mails.
Sargent thought CSL's explanation did not make sense. 'At the time the euro was trading at a 12-month low, so that would actually lead to a reduction in cost,' he said. 'The rates on their website are already rounded up, so that is not a logical explanation either, and CSL should have accounted for third-party tariffs in their rates instead of applying hidden charges.'