NEWS:Woman told she owes $201'000 in celllphone charges

MIAMI — A South Florida woman got a shock when she opened a recent cell phone bill: she owed $201,000.

It was no mistake.

Celina Aarons has her two deaf-mute brothers on her plan. They communicate by texting and use their phones to watch videos. Normally, that's not a problem. Aarons has the appropriate data plan, and her bill is about $175.

But her brothers spent two weeks in Canada and Aarons never changed to an international plan. Her brothers sent over 2,000 texts and also downloaded videos, sometimes racking up $2,000 in data charges.

T-Mobile told Aarons the bill was correct. She called Miami TV station WSVN, which contacted T-Mobile. The station reports that T-Mobile cut Aarons' bill to $2,500 — and gave her six months to pay.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44945270/ns/technology_and_science-tech_and_gadgets/

And I thought my plan was bad. While it was their fault for not having considered how much international texts would cost, I think T-mobile should have at the very least contacted the woman once her bill had reached a few hundred bucksa nd told her "hey your bill is skyrocketing, maybe you should be careful or may I show you our plans that will prevent you from paying thousands of dollars in bills".

They never give out a warning when it comes to roaming, no matter how trustworthy they are.

Andeavor wrote:They never give out a warning when it comes to roaming, no matter how trustworthy they are.

Thats fairly poor practice, but I guess from a business perspective, the more people use the better. But in such an extreme case, perhaps calling her and saying "your blasting through Thousands of dollars rather quickly with your phone" would have been appropriate.

While its unrelated, this still involves the phone company. When I start blasting through my internet usage for some reason (big downloads and whatnot), we get an emails saying "You've used 50% or 75% or 90% of your monthly usage". Would seem only fair to have something where if a customer is using alot of money on their phone plan, that they'd send out a call saying "you've used x amount in this time". Wouldn't cost them much to implement as I think it would be rare they'd need to make those kinds of calls very often.

I think the reason phone companies won't warn you about roaming charges is because while abroad you're using a different network, which might prevent them from contacting you automatically, I.e. you're out of their reach.

Andeavor wrote:I think the reason phone companies won't warn you about roaming charges is because while abroad you're using a different network, which might prevent them from contacting you automatically, I.e. you're out of their reach.

oh. Well if thats the reason, then thats fair enough.