Foreign cell phone users often ignored

Foreign cell phone users often ignored

Carriers inconvenience foreigners By Yoon Ja-young Navid Firouzbakhsh, an Austrian manager at an IT company in Seoul, feels he isn’t treated fairly by mobile carriers. “I am used to using services in the United Kingdom, the United States and other areas of Europe. “There foreigners get mileage points, and they have so many offers such as free upgrades, free handsets. Here we have little information about anything,” he said. In Korea, he said that he is often left behind about tips about how to get bonus points and accompanying benefits. It’s not clear whether the carriers intentionally neglect their duty of better informing foreign clients, at an additional cost, or not. The number of foreigners in the country stood at 1.41 million as of last September, nearing 3 percent of the total population, and many of them are using mobile services. They are, however, facing many inconveniences in the country that boasts of a high penetration for mobile services. Li Chunhua who is from China and studying in Korea must use a mobile service subscribed to by her Korean friend. “I tried to subscribe on my own, but I gave up after visiting a shop. The inconvenience made me think they are forcing foreigners to borrow names of Korean friends instead of subscribing on their own.” The first hurdle comes when they try to get a mobile phone. Besides the language problem, foreigners are perplexed when mobile shops reject them. While locals would be welcome at any mobile shop found on every corner in the country, some of them won’t serve foreigners. Firouzbakhsh, who wanted to get an Apple iPhone, for instance, had to go to KT headquarters in Gwanghwamun to subscribe to the service as the mobile shop near his home in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, told him to go there. “Foreign consumers can subscribe to services at any of our mobile shops around the country, but it seems that the employee of that shop had a problem serving a foreign customer,” said a spokeswoman for KT. She explained that KT strengthened its services for foreign customers from 2010, running Twitter and blogs, and simplifying the subscription process to that for locals. It also has some special shops dedicated to foreigners, including one in Itaewon. However, having to search for bigger agents can be a nuisance. Sometimes, foreigners must have more qualifications than locals. SK Telecom, for instance, require a security deposit from some foreigners between 50,000 won and 200,000 won, depending on their type of visa. Foreigners also complain of the lack of contracts in English or other languages. Mobile carriers say they do have contracts in English and sometimes Chinese, but they aren’t available at many shops. The inconvenience continues after subscription. While locals can immediately contact a call center by pressing 114 whenever they have any inquiry or problem using the service, this is useless for foreigners due to the language barrier. When contacted, mobile carriers said they do have call centers for foreigners. “When a foreign user calls the call center, he or she gets automatically connected to our staff in charge of foreign consumers,” an LG Uplus spokesperson said. KT operates a call center for foreigners at (02) 2190-1180, where services are available in English, Chinese and Japanese. The number for SK Telecom’s foreign call center is 080-252-5011 to access English and Japanese services. They also operate websites for foreigners. However, most of the foreigners don’t even know that foreign call centers in English exist. While local users are offered diverse services such as paying bills or sending text messages directly using the website, the pages for foreigners are usually limited to just an introduction of the company and its services.