http://www.switched.com/2007/12/14/man-gets-slapped-with-85-000-cell-phone-bill/
If you thought absurdly high and encyclopedia-sized iPhone bills were the only game in town when it comes to ridiculous cell phone charges, you were sadly mistaken. In fact those 300 page, $3,000 and $4,000 iPhone bills have nothing on what some poor Canadian oil field worker was charged by Bell Mobility.
After picking up a new phone that he could tether to his laptop and a $10 unlimited data plan, Piotr Staniaszek decided he wanted to do some downloading -- everything from HD movies to applications to watch and install on his PC. What happened next would have put most of us at the Switched offices in a body bag following a heart attack. Piotr got slapped with a $60,000 bill! Confused, he call Bell Mobility's customer service department, which informed him that it had made a mistake... his bill was actually $85,000!!
How Piotr wasn't immediately moved to violence we'll never know, but he was probably using more exclamation points than we are right now.
It turns out that he was being charged on a per-kilobyte basis because his unlimited browsing plan didn't cover using the phone as a modem. As a "goodwill" gesture, Bell Mobility has dropped the bill to measly $3,243. Staniaszek plans to fight the bill saying he was never informed about the restrictions on his wireless plan. That said, he's coming off rather lucky, considering many U.S. wireless carriers strictly forbid downloading of movies and other high-bandwidth items over wireless broadband networks.
Do you think it's fair that this poor Canadian man was charged even $3,243, or should he have read the fine print?
