$200,000 Mobile Phone Bill Underscores Need for Bill Shock Measures

"I can only think of just what types of videos her brother was downloading that could rack up such an amount? Hmm"

Holy frack!!! That's insane!!!! Thank goodness her bill was reduced to only $2500! I would have fainted seeing numbers like that on a bill!!! Another reason NOT to have a cell.

(This is one bill I'd actually like to see every page of though)

If this was any other carrier--maybe, I could understand. But with Tmobile's family allowances feature for $5/monthly, anyone who has a family account or adds people to their account (so more than just you), this is almost a must! It isn't the responsibility of the carrier to monitor what you do or how you use it. It would be like expecting a car manufacturer to text you when your friend uses your car and ends up driving it across the country and puts all kinds of damage or wear on the car. Ultimately it's the account owners responsibility to monitor usage or take advantage of tools provided by the carrier to limit the usage. If your carrier doesn't have these tools, move to one that does. It's one of the reasons I haven't switched to a better carrier is that none of them provide family plans with this type of control. Ignorance is not an excuse.

Yeaaaaaaah they should start calling the baseline and be like "hey uh you know your bill is getting really large right?"

hell even a text message would be nice.

Bill Shock,....Yeah, I've been there and it isn't pretty. Cingular raked me for $8500.00 for my first month's bill ever, until they realized that I had never got my phone.

Here I was sitting at home, wondering where that phone was. I called about not getting it several times too.

Then I got that 'mother-of-all' bills. They had the phone shipped to the wrong address and the people who got it promptly started calling home to Guatamala, several times a day. (hey! Free Phone service and it calls ANYWHERE!)

It took me three months of total BS and stress to get that bill off of my record, and later that year I learned that they had reported that amount not paid to the three credit agencies. It took 4 months to correct that bit of BS.

Wireless phone companies and their "guaranteed income no matter what" contracts SUK.

WOW, texting my sister now... lol she goes to school right next to Canada and i wouldn't want anything to pop up this month... lol But thats nice of tmobile :)

Bill Shock is a pretty nasty thing... I mean we'd think that texting is totally cool and cheap and affordable and downloading videos is also the same thing but once we cross over, we're totally reliant on roaming charged. I mean we get no notification that we're in international territory and therefore we are suspectable to roaming charged. I mean sure, we can research roaming charged but we should be made available of this information beforehand; so we can be aware of the decisions we have and the prices we'll pay if we call or make texts from overseas.

I mean I wouldn't want to be shocked and then have to deal with T-Mobile over a thousand dollar bill... And that's only because of the roaming charges, texting and downloading a video costs less in the states then it does overseas; and while roaming charges may be necessary, not reminding us about these charges is wrong and I severely hope the US does something about this, as stated in the article no one seemed to post in. http://hothardware.com/News/FCC-And-CTIA-Move-Closer-To-Bill-Shock-Prevention-Measures/ Companies like T-Mobile and AT&T should not be allowed to profit from this sort of thing.

Ridiculous. Of course the reason they were able to be so gracious and reduce her bill to $2500 bucks is it probably cost them all of $100 dollars for all the texting and data that was used.

Let T-Mobile take her to court! What jury of her peers wouldn't side with her? T-Mobile would come out of this looking like an 800 pound gorilla.

while if think its an unfortunate event, stupidity is not an excuse. they should reduce the bill but I would still make it sting. 1000 would be a fine reduction in cost, its a sting but not a life ending sting. 

Yes, stupidity is an excuse! The law should protect the stupid and the gullible before anyone else and not the son of b*tch rich who spen money on lawyers looking for loopholes to cover his stinking b*tt!

I wonder if she explained to her brother the types of charges that he could expect her to get. She should of, if she didn't. I wonder should any one feel sorry for her. She should of known that something could happen like this, but off course not this bad though. Still $2,500.00 is enough to fork out for any bill that is private. She should think of herself as lucky & take the mobile phone off her brother for ever.