$201,000 phone bill not a mistake

$201,000 visited bill not a mistake

When you fade abroad, don’t forget to pack your international calling and data plan–or face the consequences.

Perhaps you’ve faced the sticker shock of comic your cell phone abroad, where roaming rates can near as high as several dollars for each minute or few megabytes of data. Multiply that dismay by a few thousand and you might begin to be able to empathize with Celina Aarons. The Florida resident recently opened her T-Mobile bill to find a balance due of $201,000.

Unfortunately for Ms. Aarons, the bill was correct.

Screenshot by Eric Mack

The allege, as Florida TV station WSVN reported, was with a trip one of her brothers took to Canada. Two of Aarons’ brothers are deaf and use texting as a significant tool for communication. So when one of them–who is on his sisters’ visited plan–went abroad and forgot to turn off data roaming, the charges added up.

In addition to higher texting fees, T-Mobile charged 10 bucks per megabyte of data. And there was lots of data consume on the trip, including video streaming. The TV situation contacted T-Mobile, and the company agreed to drop the bill amount by approximately 99 percent–to just $2,500.

T-Mobile told WSVN that it did send texts danger of the exploding bill and increased rates, but Aarons disputes that she should have been contacted directly as the significant account holder.

In the end, it all worked out, and everyone is happy–except perhaps AT&T, who will be acquiring a company worth about $198,000 less than it necessity be, if its buyout of T-Mobile ever goes through.