Faulty iPhone Burns Through $30,000 of Mobile Data

[Earth_First]

A supposedly "faulty" iPhone landed a man in severe financial trouble, after the phone racked up an astonishing $30,000 data bill—and UK network Orange tried to take the money from the bloke's account.

Chris Bovis realised he'd been cut off, so phoned Orange for an explanation. That was when he discovered the network had tried to bill him $14,000 for exceeding his data allowance. His bank had rather unsurprisingly refused the transaction, so Orange blocked his number. Orange also told Chris his next bill would be around the $16,000 level.

The actual source of the problem is a little vague. Chris said the iPhone was even downloading data while switched off, with Apple employees agreeing it was broken in some way and replacing the phone. Orange eventually caved in and agreed to reduce his bill to $450, before completely giving up and writing off the entire amount.

http://gizmodo.com/5974069/faulty-iphone-burns-through-30000-of-mobile-data

[onehandle]

1. The word "Faulty" is in quotes. nt

[Earth_First]

2. Indeed it is. n/t

[madville]

3. Here are some others, my favorite is

The guy who ran up $27,000 watching a Chicago Bears game on a cruise ship that was still moored up in Miami but it was considered international roaming.

http://abcnews.go.com/m/blogEntry?id=15527746


We got a $300 bill in the Bahamas one time, international roaming was $1.99 a minute and my AT&T phone was the only one that got service in the group. Everyone had thrown me some cash to use it here and there though so it was expected.

[Control-Z]

4. He is lucky he wasn't with Sprint.

They never give in, no matter what.

[JoeyT]

5. Yep.

I fought with Sprint and then a collection agency for damn near a year over a land line bill for an absurd amount. I was pretty adamant about not paying the bill, since I'd never had Sprint as a carrier in my entire life. It took threats of a lawsuit to make them piss off.

Sprint didn't give in, though, the collection agency did.

[Thegonagle]

6. It can happen.

I'm not sure about the downloading while switched off, but it's definitely possible for a bad app (or a bad update to a good app) to make it freeze up or go into an endless loop or something while downloading data. With the speed possible on today's mobile networks, it could pull several gigabytes in a few hours.