T-Mobile customer slapped with $201,000 USD usage bill

by Steven Mostyn - Oct 20 2011, 13:36

We’ve all occasionally been guilty of running a little rich with our mobile phone usage. And we’ve all had to shoulder the resulting sting that accompanies that month’s service bill.

That being said, we certainly feel for Florida resident Celina Aarons, who was left “crying and shaking” after she received a whopping 43-page phone bill from T-Mobile earlier this month.

And, it’s worth bearing in mind that it was the outstanding sum of $201,000 USD that inflicted the aforementioned emotional damage, not the unusual physical heft of the bill itself.

Unfortunately for Aarons, she made the mistake of lending her mobile phone to her brother Shamir as he departed for a holiday trip to the northern climes of Canada—thereby incurring T-Mobile’s international usage rates.

Shamir, who is deaf, dispatched more than 2,000 text messages during his vacation, which amounted for around $500 USD of the bill at $0.20 USD per message.

Meanwhile, the remaining balance was totted up via the unwitting user downloading and/or streaming online video content, which comes with an international rate of $10 USD per megabyte.

According to T-Mobile, Shamir failed to curb his usage despite the phone being sent data roaming warnings as the bill passed through $50 USD, $100 USD, $200 USD, and $500 USD.

Although fully within its rights to force the issue and demand payment, T-Mobile has since acknowledged the anguish of Aarons and agreed to reduce the bill to $2,500 USD. It has also given the contract holder six months to pay it off.

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