Canadian man gets a $85,000 mobile phone bill

In case you thought that $10 “unlimited mobile browsing plan” allows you to tether your phone to your computer, think again. A Canadian man from Calgary thought tethering was included in the price, hence he went forward using its mobile phone like a modem all the time. After a month of downloading HD movies and other bandwidth-hungry apps, he was slapped with an $85,000 phone bill. In an interview to CBS News, 22-year-old Piotr Staniaszek argued he wasn’t aware of additional charges for hooking up his phone to the computer.

Bell, Piotr’s carrier, has since made a “goodwill gesture” and reduced Staniaszek’s bill to $3,243, even adding he got the “best data plan available for using cellphones as a modem.” Bell’s spokesman Mark Langton said Piotr should have known that using the cellphone as a modem wasn’t part of his data plan, and that it wasn’t “accidental” as their customers receive a warning message informing them that an additional data charges on top of the mobile browser plan will be added for using a their phones in this manner.

[Via: The Register]