Canadian man runs up $85,000 cell phone bill
Always read the fine print, which is good advice for everyone. A Canadian man thought that his $10 unlimited mobile browser plan with Bell Mobility would enable him to use his mobile phone as a modem. Now that does make him a little stupid to be honest, however that $85,000 bill that he just received also makes him poor!
After downloading HD movies, music and other large files he was somewhat surprised to receive the bill. Before you go feeling all sympathetic for this guy, here are some facts:
- His normal bill was around $150 a month.
- He thought his $63,000 bill in November was a mistake and carried on downloading.
- He carried on downloading and racked up an additional $20,000 in one month.
Bell Mobility has already cut the bill to $3,243 which equates to the best data plan as a gesture of goodwill, but Piotr Staniaszek is “going to try and fight it, because I didn’t know about the extra charges.” Again, always read the fine print.
Via [BBC]
Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - 
Subscribe to our feed →
Comments
Join the Discussion
Featured Content
Masthead
Executive Editors
Editor
Associate Editor
Around the Network
Am I missing something here? Bell lowered the bill to $3243 as being the equivalent of the best data plan. Does that mean that the company was overcharging that customer by roughly$63,000 in the first place for services rendered?
on December 15, 2007 at 01:13 AM - LINKWhile I agree that one should always read the “fine print” let’s remember also that when you buy a service you’re not always told the caveats to a plan. It is human nature NOT to read the “fine print”; partly because one almost needs to be a lawyer to interpret it. How many of you actually read the “fine print” of your service agreements? So the unlimited browser access for $10.00 per month probably stipulated web only (port 80) text access and NOT binary data access which is assessed at a different rate. Not everyone is going to be clear about the difference!
Yes, many of us are well aware of the very high data rates in Canada (blame the CRTC for this! They are still set at an 80’s rate when 100 Kb was considered a lot of data!). In fact, I am sure Canada’s data packet rates are the highest in the developed world!
Anyhow, I simply do not use Internet on my cell phone but that is because I am well aware of the costs. Not everyone has this knowledge nor should we be too quick to condemn them for their ignorance in this matter.
This is an interesting and timely story and I hope it truly causes change in the Industry because lowering data packet rates to what the rest of the world pays will stimulate business, mobile ecommerce, and actually make the cell phone providers more money! This is a “no brainer” business and marketing 101 idea!
Bell would do well to forgive 99% of this bill (so far it seems that they are willing to forgive 95%). It is not a true revenue lose in terms of losing packets that could have been otherwise sold to someone else. The $60000.00 fee was simply pure profit. Finally, as long as data packet rates remain high, all provider should implement software routines that flag and stop accounts that reach unusually high charges. Ex. $140 per month user is not likely going to incur more than say 45% more of that in a month.
Good luck Piotr!
on December 15, 2007 at 09:02 AM - LINK