Gizmodo
How do you manage to run up an $85,000 mobile phone bill you ask? Apparently, 22-year-old Calgary native Piotr Staniaszek was under the impression that his $10 "unlimited browser plan" on Bell Mobility gave him carte blanche to use his cellphone as a PC modem. Unfortunately, when a $60,000 bill arrived in his mailbox for the month of November he learned the hard way that this was not the case. The charges were later upped to $85,000 "because the company was charging him on a per-kilobyte basis."
Bell Mobility has reduced the charges to $3,243 as gesture of goodwill, but they claim that Staniaszek should have known that using a cellphone as a modem fell outside the realm of normal usage. They also noted that the software he used for this purpose warned him that additional charges would apply. Still, Staniaszek plans of fighting the bill citing that Bell Mobility's policies were unclear. You would think that this would be pretty open and shut, but in a world where you can be rewarded a settlement for spilling hot coffee in your lap at McDonalds, I'm not so sure. [The Register]
Comments
They shouldn't have reduced his charges, there's no need for goodwill here.
If you honestly think you can torrent movies on your $10 "mobile internet" plan, for no extra charge, you deserve to earn yourself years of crushing debt.
Bell Mobility: "we're in the moneeey... we're in the moneey.... we've got a lot of what it takes to get along! "
jeez, they knock off tens of thousands and he still wants to fight it? Those crazy canucks.
He should just give Bell Mobility a Jelly. They like Jelly.
That's why we don't have iPhones....
come on $10 phone internet as a computer modem, honestly...thats got to be about like dial-up...now if it was 3G that would be a different story, but that would also be about $50/month
This reminds me of what a cheapskate I am. I tethered my sprint phone for 2 minutes, then logged on and noticed it cost me 50 cents or whatever...I can't even recall...needless to say...I don't tether anymore.
that guy is such a loser. I can't believe he's going to fight that. he is obviously in the wrong
RTM.
or more accurately, RTFC.
eh.
@Mandatory_Field: How do you say "This is why we can't have nice things!" in French-Canadien?
^ whoops, meant RTFM.
take-off!
He's obviously in the wrong here. Multi-billion dollar corporations don't pay their lawyers huge salaries so that some idiot can hope for a loop hole or claim that the policy is unclear... and the correct word in your picture of Doug and Bob is "eh" not aye. We never say that...
Doo-Deh!
What was this guy loading?
(except from "Teh Obvious")
@Polybius: Bob and Doug, eh. Not Doug and Bob, hoser.
I previously had a sprit phone that I did this with all the time. It was an extremely slow connection but it fell under the unlimited web access package I had… there were no extra charges. I happened to be living in a place that only had DSL, but only if you payed an extra $50 for a home phone. Why do companies still insist on pushing landlines? I don't need another phone #.
@honozooloo: Actually RTFC works perfectly fine in this instance. As the manual would not have talked about the proper wireless use, but the contract would.
Yeah he's taking a big risk, that settlement offer of $3200 is going to get rescinded if he takes them to court. If he loses he'll have to pay the whole amount I'd bet. Also the terms of his account probably are spelled out in the paperwork, they just weren't clear to him.
The big question is, how can they not have some kind of credit limit in place to let someone run up $85k in a month using a cell phone account? It logically should cut off after some amount is reached, based on their credit score. Also, why doesn't dingleberry have WiFi? More mysteries than a Nancy Drew novel here...
I don't think it was as much a gesture of good will and they realized they had a snowball's chance in hell to get $85,000 out of this moron and maybe they could get $3,000 out of him. Plus, everyone knows it didn't cost Bell Mobility $85,000 for this hoser to use their data. $3,000 is probably even pushing it.
@mangochutney:
It was probably porn (was that too obvious for you?)
@Hello_Newman:
"The big question is, how can they not have some kind of credit limit in place to let someone run up $85k in a month using a cell phone account?"
That will probably be the the argument of the plaintiff attorneys if it does reach court.
We know providers can track how much data is used given Verizon's recent "5GB a month and we'll kick you off" decision so I don't see how it would be a problem for others to follow suit in monitoring how much their customers actually use.
How much does Bell charge per kb? I wanna know how much he actually used to incur such a vast amount.
@omg-ponies: Heh. How about "Les frais pour effectuer les telechargements sont beaucoup trop cher au Canada, ce qui rendre les bon jouets de ne pas etre abordable" in bad french without accents.
@tdj114: About 12 bucks a MB....
Also, if you think this is a costly phone bill, you're sadly mistaken...
[www.msnbc.msn.com]
Granted, this was the proper amount but imagine getting that kinda bill in the mail.
accidentally ran up 500 on my mom's treo before she had an internet plan. They reimbursed her luckly
every stupid cell phone company in canada still charges a "system access fee" which used to be a government fee, but now is just charged by cell companies to add an extra $7-10 a month to a cell phone bill.
Bell is the worst at $8.95 per month "system access fee"
This pisses me off, I hope he wins his case and gets out of his shitty bell contract.
O.K. It wasn't a smart thing to do. And we can bitch all we want, but he got off the hook(oh I did it but you can't hold me to it). I think I would want a cap. on my account if I wasn't smarter than that.
Wow. The McDonald's coffee lawsuit is still being trotted out as the poster child for stupid judgments? It wasn't.
Next thing you'll be telling me you believe that Al Gore said he invented the internet.
I hope he wins as well. These mobile providers are getting away with straight robbery. Sometimes I accidentally push the the web button on my phone in my pocket and it costs me $7 every time without even loading a page. Somethings just don't equate. Rogers told me that it costs either 3cents/kb or $21/mb (they charge which ever costs more at the time).
@Mandatory_Field:
I was charged about $50 for a supposed 500kb which was what I used to set up features on the phone.
@Polybius: Well, does anyone actually HAVE a copy of the north of the border cell contract? Let's find out. After all, big money lawyers fuck up ALL the time. As often as regular people. And besides, tort law is all about the semantic interpretation of a contract. Who knows? Maybe it actually IS unclear.*
*note: probably not. idiot.
@Kareem King: Every cell phone comes with a key-lock. Use it.
@tdj114: difference being one is a mistake and one is a scammy douche bag who thought he was getting one up on a major corporation.
Actually my webmaster built and runs my website using a company cellphone as a modem... but with a real unlimited access account through ATT(the artist formerly known as cingular).
Heres the explanation: he's Canadian
$85,000 seems like a lot for a month, but if you figure that comes out to only $1,020,000 per year, it's not all that bad.
@someToast:
Absolutely right about the McDonalds case. A friend of mine was a lawyer on it, working for Micky D. He wasn't the least bit surprised by the verdict. Ronald deserved to get smacked.
The $85k phone bill seems like a scam, however. It's probably a safe bet that the contract was written so that it sounds better than it really is; AT&T wants people to agree to it after all. So it's probably been engineered so that they can screw people over, while a casual reader would not spot the gotcha.
Why does it cost me more to use my cellphone as a dial-up access point?
Isn't that the same as me talking to a person for hours and hours and hours?
What's the difference? I don't imagine the guy getting massive bandwidth usage - you people even remember what a modem sounds like when it's talking with another modem?
Give me a break - this parallel universe of dial-up from my land line and dial-up from a cellphone needs to be merged.
Are you going to argue to the same extent that sending a FAX with your computer and cellphone should be charged at the DATA RATE in your plan?
If he's using 1x or any of the other crappy wireless data delivery methods trotted along by crappy carriers, I would say he's screwed.
And JUST 3k for the BEST data plan? I wonder how many small company owners are re-evaluating their need for a crappy data access plan - the carrier I used before didn't allow the sale of their wifi enabled cellphones without a data plan, I was willing to pay their retail price, but didn't want anything to do with a data plan, why do I need it when there's a hotspot in just about every place I go?
As for the LAME captions on the picture above, it's supposed the be "EH", not "aye" like he's a pirate, come on!
Bell rates suck ass ...their r no really good canadian rates but bell and telus r the worst wallet rapists out there.
@skulldriveshaft: I really don't understand why so many people are defending the cell phone companies here, either. Even if data "costs" them more, it certainly isn't in the 5-figures more. He should have been charged what anyone else with an unlimited data plan would be charged. The same should be true with minute overages (bumped into higher minute usages- several companies do this) How many other users are out there using GB's of data, and it costs the company no where near the realm of 85,000 or even 3,000- they saw the opportunity to make money. It happens all the time, by forcing the consumer into a showcase-showdown of cellphone service (closest to what you think you'll use, without going over!) Sure the cell company has a right to make money, but not to PUNISH consumers like this.
Doug: "Like how many beers would that be, if you want like, a sixpack in metric?"
Bob: "Six, six is 12, 30 is 42 beers. 42 metric beers."
Doug: "That's good for me eh. Count me in on metric."
DUDE, YOU'RE GETTIN' A JOB.
how is he in the wrong. bell told him he was paying for unlimited browsing so he didn't limit his browsing. if it's not unlimited, they shouldn't call it unlimited.
it may be obvious to gizmodo readers, but most of my friends wouldn't know the difference between plans, or between edge and evdo. if somebody showed them how to tether their phone, and they knew they were paying $10 extra for an unlimited plan, they would have no reservations about using that for absolutely everything.
it should be the carrier's responsobility to educate their customers about these things.
Gotta agree with KIRINBOY and someToast on the McDonald's case..at first I thought it was ridiculous, but then I learned about the specifics of the case in a law class. Quick summary:
2 people were also burned by their hot coffee and subsequently came and told McDonald's to turn it down, yet they did not. The woman who won the settlement was burned to the point that doctors said she would sit down or walk again without pain, as she had to have skin grafts to repair the burns.
As for the amount of the settlement, $6.1 million was one day of McDonald's coffee profits. Something about how hot the coffee was kept allowed them to make more and sell more. Hence the amount($6.1 mil) is actually quite a good fit.
There, don't say you didn't learn something new today.
crap..correction *The woman who won the settlement was burned to the point that doctors said she would never sit down or walk again without pain*
@norfizzle:
So,,,, she could stuff many fresh hundos into her crotch everyday for the rest of her life to comfort her pain and suffering? This is just SO fucked up.
Ok I live not far from this guy and I'm guessing he works in the oil-patch(I did for 3 years) I'm betting he was sitting in camp(a glorified mobile home for 30 people)which most do not have internet let alone wifi. On another site it is noted that he had gotten notice before when his bill reached $150 for talking so why wouldn't they let him know now? The reason they reduced the charges was because they gave him the data plan with their cheapest rate. Its pretty common for them to do this. He is just mad it wasn't made clear what you can do with it and they didn't notify him earlier of the excessive charges.Canadian cellular plans are way more expensive than their equivalent American plans.
The only way you get money from MacDonalds is when the spill causes 3rd degree burns and requires skin grafts. Which the case you cite in your ignorance is about. But hey, if Jay Leno can flog this one for years, why no the giz?
CBC had an article on this story too:
[www.cbc.ca]
Apparently the guy was downloading "huge hi res movie files". Maybe Bell Mobility decided to lower the rate so that CMPDA (Canada's MPAA) can also get something out of him...
And this case has nothing in common with the Liebeck v. McDonald's Restaurants lawsuit. Look it up on wikipedia - she originally only wanted enough to cover her two years of medical bills for recovering from the incident but McD's tried to sluff her off and even though the jury awarded huge punitive damages in the end it was hardly frivolous since she and McD's settled on less than $600K.
@notatoad:
I gotta agree with you about calling a data plan unlimited. I can't believe providers can get away with that without getting raped with class action suits. Wouldn't be suprised if they were.
@Fierock: @Fierock:
Not quite. He could have been but here's what the article 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."
I suspect the Bell rep was using movies to compare the size of the file he was downloading. It may well have been movies but I wouldn't quote it as being definite.
Based on the amount of data he spent ($85000 @ $12/Mb = 7.8 Gb) in November and December, I'd say otherwise. If he did download HD video, it was a couple at most.