First time to post here, but I need help…
My sister lived in Japan with me a couple of years ago until the pandemic hit and she had to leave Japan urgently and has not been able to come back.
Because she left in a hurry, she didn’t have time to close her bank and Au accounts.
Due to her circumstance, she couldn’t even deal with her Japan accounts until after a year after she left and had been paying about a year’s worth of monthly dues.
So she called Au from overseas and told them to close her account, which Au didn’t have a problem with. Thinking everything had been settled, she went on with her life, until 6 months later, she realized Au had still been charging her for something she had no idea what.
So she called Au again and apparently, the ipad she bought here had an Au sim included in it so that had been eating up on her saved up salary as well. She can’t speak very good Japanese so she doesn’t even remember how she got a sim card in there.. so she called again to cancel that, and that should have been that, however, she had actually already sold her ipad online to someone she doesn’t know and apparently Au can’t cancel her account unless she either knows the number of the sim or she has the actual ipad, both of which she doesn’t.
So I went to an Au branch today to try to talk to the staff and see what else we could do, and all they could tell me was there was nothing they could do?? They didn’t give us other options except to accept the fact that my sister will be charged for the rest of her life?? I really don’t understand why they can’t just look up my sister’s files and view the transaction of when she apparently bought a sim card through their shop for her iPad Anyway, my sister only had a few savings from that bank account and her money there has been depleted, and now Au is sending her letters about lawyers and suing and shit. I’m not sure how serious this all is.. she has not been back to Japan and I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this situation.
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23 comments
This doesn’t make any sense. What if the ipad is lost/stolen?
Is it possible that the number of the sim card is somewhere in her email?
Tell them that you lost the SIM card. They have to give you another SIM card and tell them right there in their face to cancel the account. I did that. I left my DOCOMO SIM card state side. They were like, we need the SIM card. I’m like I LOST THE SIM CARD. I need another one. But you are going to cancel… not anymore… went the next day. Cancelled
> so she called again to cancel that, and that should have been that
No. That shouldn’t “*have been that*” at all, because then anyone could just dial in pretending to be someone else and cancel that person’s account.
> I really don’t understand why they can’t just look up my sister’s files and view the transaction of when she apparently bought a sim card through their shop for her iPad.
Again, no. Unless you brought proof that your sister authorized you to act on her behalf, you shouldn’t be able to do anything just because you share the same last name (presumably).
Look, I get that your situation sucks, but you have to look at the situation objectively. It seems to me that your first step is finding out how to prove you are authorized to act on her behalf.
I think AU’s idea about a lawyer is reasonable. That way you can settle on an amount and have the SIM disabled.
Umm. Is your sister ever coming back? If not… why does she care?
That happened to a friend who went to the US for furlough, unfortunately he caught the virus and to make the story short he passed away. I went to Softbank to have his account but was told they won’t close it unless 1. the owner of the phone shows up to the shop(which is ridiculious because he already passed away) or 2. I can present a death certificate. So, I contacted his wofe which os in the US and ask her to send the death cert. So, a month has passed and I got the death certificate and even got it translated to Japanese. I brought it to softbank and presented them the death certificate and was told they can’t cancel the account unless it’s an immediate family member that brings the death certificate to the shop. I told rhem the immediate family lives in the US and they are not coming here just to close a phone account. They suggested to have a family member of my friend to call softbank international to have the account cancelled. The wife was finally able to cancel the account but I keep receiving letter of demand to pay and then some months after that is a letter about getting sued for not paying the phone bills.
Au are scum. I rented a router off them and its speed was terrible so I tried to cancel. They refused unless I physically went to the original store where I bought it which was in another prefecture after I moved away. They had no basis to make that condition. It was just a way to keep the account running.
If you’d like to cancel the contract on behalf of your sister, you have to bring several things to the shop. Apparently you need a. proxy ( you can download on their website but I don’t know if they have English format) b. your sister’s identification c. your own identification. At this point, all they can do is just cancel because your sister technically lost the SIM and has no intention to continue the contract.
Maybe you can find a girl friend that look a bit like your sister and she can show up with your sister ID :)?
This is such a Japan thing.
I saw this dingus reply here:
> This doesn’t make any sense. What if the ipad is lost/stolen?
You can always tell when someone just don’t get it.
Here’s the rub: Japan’s business culture isn’t always common sense, it’s often just figuring out the ‘correct’ path to do what you want. It can be a trial and error process. Saying you lost it would probably be the best ‘path.’
I’m sorry, But you haven’t got a legal leg to stand on. Regardless of the situation of departure you or she could have done something about this sooner.
Had a similar problem but not related to sim card. They aren’t gonna sue you for that cos it’s just a pain in the ass for them. At best they might set a debt collector to annoy you but that’s it. If she was still in Japan, sure she might get screwed but if not they can’t do shit.
AU is the worst company I dealt with in Japan. I canceled my phone plan with them in person before my contract renewal, got a verbal verification that I was all good, then found out months later they kept auto-withdrawing from my bank. Went back to figure out what was going on and they told me they had no record of me ever cancelling. When I asked them if they thought it was strange that I didn’t make any calls or use any data for the previous six months they just shrugged their shoulders and said too bad. Oh and if I remember correctly they charged me an extra ¥16000 for cancelling in the middle of the new yearly term.
They are rabid when it comes to money. I just cancelled my account late for 2 days and they charged 1man. You can’t even cancel a day or two ahead of time. It has to be on the day itself nothing more, nothing less.
I went to Japan previously as an exchange student and came back in 2 years. Before leaving I was similarly stupid and didn’t cancel the contract. Differently from your sisters case I used SoftBank and they charged me up to 6 months of payments until they made my contract/SIM card void. Of course as I came back I swiftly paid all of the missing payments as I found out to avoid any possible issues.
Maybe Au has the same rule? Stop paying for half a year / or make the account where the money if taken off empty for 6-7 months and the SIM card will be automatically void to use.
Or try to deal with the bureaucracy of Japanese system to cancel the contract.
A while ago I read someone’s description of Japanese customer service as something along the lines of “the most polite bad service in the world.”
This whole thread seems to emphasize that.
It wasn’t about the SIM she bought, it was the iPad by the sounds of it. Phone shops do this in the UK too, it’s just a form of credit, where they give you the device and you pay it off each month. They throw the SIM card contract in there too but the main payment is the credit.
She has to offer to pay for the device outright.
Oh great reading all this I wish I was not with AU. I chose them randomly.
this sounds like it could be a pattern. even though your sister may have forgotten about the sim, i’m sure she mentioned she was leaving the country. any agent with common sense and decency would look at her entire account and ask if she wanted to keep other services active. i wonder if they get incentives for trapping customers in predatory plans?
even when i switched phones and told them in-store to cancel ALL old services and switch me to an updated plan, they conveniently “forgot” to take my old tablet off. the rest is a loooong story, but TL/DR it led to a vicious cycle of back n forth, discovery of suspicious charges, and months of fighting while they bled me dry to get sorted!
This sound like extortion with extra steps.
Cancel the card and bank account? Can’t steal your money if there’s no source?
I’m sorry that you’re going through this. As much fun as it is to blame the phone/isp companies, the people who work at the company, or ‘Japanese people” in general, the problem actually lies within the realm of Telecommunication Regulations, which of course vary from country to country.
Definitely, don’t panic, steel your nerves, and take the direct (nonemotional) approach.
1. Become an authorized user who can fully manage her account.
2. Report the sim card lost, and request a new one.
3. Cancel the account.
4. Pay the last bill. The Japanese collection agencies will keep any outstanding debt in your sister’s name on their list for 5 years. I’m not sure, but after the account is closed, it’s possible that you will inherit that debt as the authorized user, so it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Be sure to document everything. You can also try to recoup the funds, but it will take some work. It should be fairly easy to prove that your sister has left Japan and still lives in the States (I assume she used her passport to leave and she’s filing a tax return).
Good luck!
FYI It’s just as difficult to correct USA-phone services while living in Japan.
For example, try lazily deciding not to close a Verizon wireless account while in the USA, then try to close it from Japan as an authorized user, but without primary account control. (Short story: early impossible but doable with a signed affidavit and help from a lawyer. Long story: Many hours on the Verizon app at $10 a day… yes, we had to pay international fees to use the My Verizon app…I’m still slightly mad at my husband about this…lol)
Or in the case of FIOs (internet), try getting the money back that was incorrectly withdrawn via autopay on an already-closed account because someone at Verizon forgot to mark the linked FIOs account as such in the Verizon system. The employees I speak to every month see the money owed back to me. And even though they know I’m in Japan, they keep telling me to go to the nearest Verizon store to process the refund…which I believe is in Honolulu (about 7 hours from Kyushu, and I don’t have that much vacation time). I’ve sent a letter to corporate HQ, the next step is a formal complaint to the FCC. Fun times.
Dude… is she ever going to come back to Japan? No? Then tell her to stop communicating. They have no legal recourse.