Deaf Lady Shocked $200,000 Cell Phone Bill

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Chevy57

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MIAMI (AP) — 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 Help Me Howard - High phone bill that T-Mobile cut Aarons' bill to $2,500 and gave her six months to pay.

Fla. woman shocked by $200,000 cell phone bill - Yahoo! News

Shamir had been on vacation in Canada where he didn't turn his data roaming off. Texting over 2,000 times and using the phone to download videos. Bringing this charge for $1,800. This one for $1,300 this one for $2,500. On and on and on.
 
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.
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It gotta be a real reason that explains why she got the huge bill.

A few years ago Adam Savage of Mythbusters got $11,000 in his mobile bill after he returned home from Montreal, Canada.
 
well.... it's not T-Mobile's fault.... they should be glad that T-Mobile cut her some slack but I do believe that T-Mobile should have notified them at certain point.
 
Jiro said:
well.... it's not T-Mobile's fault.... they should be glad that T-Mobile cut her some slack but I do believe that T-Mobile should have notified them at certain point.
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Agreed.

Last year I went to see a representative at local Telus store to get my plans changed a couple of weeks before i went to Las Vegas. The plan was free text messages & e-mails except images and $10 per 1 gb data for web browsing. In the end I only paid $10 extra in my mobile bill and I was very happy with it. :)
 
Royale said:
It gotta be a real reason that explains why she got the huge bill.

A few years ago Adam Savage of Mythbusters got $11,000 in his mobile bill after he returned home from Montreal, Canada.
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He forgot to turn data roaming off out of USA.
 
There's no way $200,000 is reasonable considering how cheap it is to transfer data.
 
The government is going after companies for not warming people they're going over their limits Companies will now have to let people know when they're reaching their limits so their bills will not get so high.
 
whatdidyousay! said:
The government is going after companies for not warming people they're going over their limits Companies will now have to let people know when they're reaching their limits so their bills will not get so high.
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Congress is not pursing this anymore since companies voluntarily announced that they will end "Bill Shock" as of yesterday. or today. Unfortunately..... it will take effect on October 2013.

Congress was dumbfounded by their response because they believed it should not take that long to implement this simple feature but hey... at least companies are doing it. Congress threatened to make a legislation if they failed to show any progress.
 
AT&T notifies you when you are outside of the US via text messages saying you are using data/sms at $$ rate. I got it while I was on Rogers wireless in Canada and while overseas too.

Guess T-mobile didn't implement this. They really need money anyway.

It's hard for newbies to realize they are on roaming, since they don't understand how cell companies and their phones work. I'm glad that android has custom roms and widgets to force no-data use or wireless outside the country, I ended up using wifi to sync all the info etc.
 
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