Posted on 12/13/2007 6:43:02 PM PST by BGHater
Bell Mobility to adjust bill in 'measure of goodwill'
A Calgary man is disputing a cellphone bill of nearly $85,000, claiming the phone company failed to tell him using his phone to surf the internet would cost so much.
The Motorola Krzr model Piotr Staniaszek bought from Bell Mobility allows him to use the phone to connect with his computer; downloading data to the computer resulted in the shocking charges.
"I didn't know what to think. I thought there was probably a mistake," the 22-year-old oil-field worker said of the extraordinary total.
A spokesman for Bell said the company will adjust Staniaszek's bill in "a measure of goodwill." But he will still owe Bell more than $5,000.
A bill that large is extremely rare, spokesman Jacques Bouchard said.
"What happened is that the client used the cellphone as a modem linking it directly to the computer and downloading huge files, ... high-res movies for instance."
Staniaszek said he pays $10 a month for unlimited mobile browsing on his cellphone. "So I figured that was the same thing, but I guess not."
After speaking to Bell about November charges of $65,000, Staniaszek said he was informed his bill had increased to nearly $85,000 after more downloading in December.
Staniaszek said the company should have alerted him to the soaring tally. He normally pays about $150 a month for his phone.
"The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over. Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on.
"I told them I wasn't aware that I would be charged for hooking up my phone to the computer. I'm going to try and fight it, because I didn't know about the extra charges. Nobody explained any of this to me."
Bouchard said Bell cannot monitor the activities of every one of its customers.
200kb? More than that one a single news site with pictures and advertising. One page.
Legal, financial rape is a very good description.
Ma Bell just ripped me $2700.00 for sending 6 cheesy digital pics taken from my cell phone and sent to my yahoo email. Total time 14 minutes. 4.2 megs.
“Staniaszek said he pays $10 a month for unlimited mobile browsing on his cellphone. “So I figured that was the same thing, but I guess not.” “
This guy is not an idiot. Read that above quote from the article. That is ambiguous in the extreme on the part of the phone company. The bottom line is that the phone should not allow iteslf to be hooked up to a computer for that purpose when on a data plan of that type. This is robbery on the part of the carrier by taking advantage of the ignorance of its customers. It’s more than unethical, it should be criminal. How many people would guess in their wildest dreams that “unlimited browsing” even though it says “on his cellphone” would mean that charges would be accrued at that rate if hooked to a PC? Generally you would think that they would limit the download speed or have some other method to stop abuse. But to simply begin charging an extraordinary rate with no warning? No, that’s criminal.
Everything said in previous posts is true. A stop could easily be put in place that would inform you that you are about to incurr charges beyond you monthly bill. And another even more easily when you hit several hundred dollars.
This is just sick and wrong.
...oh yea, this was after they “lost” my business phone number of 11 year for 5 weeks, costing me countless thousands of dollars in lost revenue while trying to port from a land line to a cell phone.
I call it “the AT&T put you out of business plan”.
Well, my company had a $6,000 phone bill for one of our 70+ cell phones, this was for one day’s email business with a client. The client wanted the data by email, he screamed about the bill, but paid.
Wow. Sounds like being ignorant (me) about how to use my cell phone is saving me big bucks.
He normally pays about $150 a month for his phone.
This guy is just ripe for the pluckin'
Right. Sprint also calls this "phone as modem". I think it's quite cool. Use bluetooth (or usb) to connect your laptop to the phone and the phone dials the internet connection. Viola! You're on the net.
Sure comes in handy when out and about or traveling and have no wifi access or cable.
Sprint has a data plan for this that costs $40 a month for unlimited data. This *is* different than "unlimited" internet access to browse from your phone.
I also think that doing this without a plan Sprint cuts you off at $100 worth. May be wrong about that though.
Heh. We had to trade in our medieval cell phones for new ones with cameras, so I took some pictures and even phone-mailed one, but then my introductory internet service expired, and I discovered that this included sending pictures. Soooo, I bought a download cable for twenty bucks or so, and set out to download them. I got referred to the Samsung helpdesk, and found that I couldn’t even access their home page because my flash player was out of date ... and I couldn’t download the new flash player because my OS is out of date! Never mind downloading the device driver.
Well, I can still look at the pictures on my cell phone.
Same here. You using Virgin? I have a nice Virgin camera phone. I generally keep it turned off, don't give anyone but family my number, and only use it when I need to. I pay enough for cable and hi-speed; I'll be darned if I'm gonna pay $100+ a month for a damn phone.
They are always 15 days behind.
Yep, Virgin...Off most of the time, until I actually need it. $20 every 90 days.
“downloading the device driver”
Trying to find a device driver usually ends up with me running full bore into a concrete wall head first and liking it.
Exactly. One’s and idiot and one’s a thief exploiting an idiot. I don’t know what’s worse, I think the thief in the end.
I got the same kind of treatment. I got a new service with verizon cause cingular sucked. The first two months went A-OK, then I had a busier than normal month at work.
I get a $466 bill.
No rollover. None offered. ALOT of mystery charges too, like them texting me, when I declined texting up front. Yet I get charged for replying...and my reply was simply to reject the text SINCE I DIDN’T ACCEPT TEXTS IN THE PLAN!
Unfortunately, they’re all the same. Gotta have it for work and of course work only pays $45 a month.
Ditto- I use a Virgin prepaid phone. It’s even better now that they’ve dumped the daily charge which used up your $$ quickly. Now you only pay for minutes used.
If people use their cellphones as tools of communication, not entertainment devices, they would save a ton of money.
I don’t particularly WANT to be reachable by phone every minute of the day. Remember when we could leave the house to shop or whatever and didn’t feel the need to talk to a dozen people while out?
It’s actually possible to drive, and shop and keep appointments without a phone in your ear! Really- humans have done it for a long time!
When we got our first cell phone, we didn’t realize text messages were extra. We keep a very low plan, only 500 minutes. We got a whopping bill that first month, but nothing it was impossible to pay.
But I chased every kid down that thought it was funny to send my son stupid text messages that were just idiotic comments and told them I was going to make them eat our next phone bill if they did it again.
You know, many of them didn’t get the message. My son pays extra now for getting a few messages a month. But I was furious at the company. They constantly pull little tricks like this. They know reading their info is like reading Japanese; they can always get you over something you didn’t know. I didn’t even know what a text message was at the time.
Anyone who doesn’t know what the cost of something is before they buy deserves the bill they get.
You are sooooooo right. Because a retard thinks he gets everything for free and downloads porn all daylong to his phone and spanks it in a restroom...we will soon be using string and cans.
Was this story about you?
Tough. He should pay the bill. Now the other subscribers will have to pay.
The other subscribers will have to pay WHAT, exactly? There is no real incremental cost incurred by the phone company here. It's just a fight over whether how much they should charge him for the use of infrastructure that already exists. Note how when the company was called on the matter they immediately backpedaled from outrageous ($85,000) to ridiculous ($5,000).
What this shows you is that some accountant at Corporate is just pulling huge random numbers out of his ass and hoping that one of them sticks. If they got shamed into cutting it all the way back to exorbitant ($500 or so) they would still be making a pile of money off this chump.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.