All phones services I've used charge for total usage, regardless of the initiator. If someone calls me, I still get dinged for every minute I'm on the line, same as if I placed an outgoing call. (Granted, I've only used pay-as-you-go type services, so perhaps other services are different.)

In Europe all services I have seen has been of the kind where whoever makes the call pays, and nobody ever gets charged for receiving calls.

Under such a system, this can become a issue.

I bet from the phone company they don't see the problem. Both were intending to place a call so they both pay :)

Apparently only the US and Canada charge the phone owner for incoming calls.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GSM_services#Incoming_calls

Europe, Asia, Australia etc all charge the caller.

This leads to awkward situations like when I called someone in the US and they were worried that they're going to get charged international rates for a call from abroad.

Wow, dick move. Getting charged for the incoming call is something I associate with getting ripped off by roaming call charges.

Many years ago, using Virgin Mobile (in the UK) I remember being charged for incoming calls, however these days on all UK networks (and I assume this is the case for most of Europe) the caller gets charged but the callee does not

Both of them, obviously. ;)

The one with lower timestamp.