My Phone Bill Is What?!

The mobile phone market is booming with amazing pieces of hardware and software. The world is now surprisingly interconnected and there are smartphones in the hands of more humans on earth than ever. There is one seedy underbelly of this technology that very few talk about: overage charges. The past few years have shown mobile phone bills hit record numbers and here are just a few that are sure to drop any jaw to the floor.

It seems that even 'unlimited' plans will eventually hit a limit. One of the first records was set in 2005 by Deepak Sharma. In a single month he was able to accrue just over 182,000 text messages. Two men, Nick Andes and Dough Klinger of Pennsylvania, decided that they could topple this record for text messages in a single month and both signed up for an 'unlimited' plan. The race began as the men were sending upwards of 7,000 text messages every single day for an entire month. While many of the texts were single words, they did follow a normal progression of a conversation and by the end of the 30 day period they had hit an astounding 217,000 total text messages.

All was well until Nick Andes got package on his front door step. Ripping open the letter he found a bill for $26,000 dollars in overage charges. Both men decided to fight this and went public. It did not take long for T-Mobile to eventually back down after the men attacked their claim for 'unlimited' texts. Eventually, both parties decided to settle on an undisclosed amount.

World Record Data Charges

Back in 2005, a 22 year old oil field worker got a nasty surprise after opening one of his cell phone bills. Piotr Staniaszek would spend weeks at a time out in the fields with very little access to the outside world. That is, until decided to use his phone as a mobile hot spot to supply his laptop with internet access. Unfortunately, one of Piotr's favorite pastimes was watching movies on his laptop, so most of his internet usage was downloading and streaming videos for hours every single day.

While Piotr's bill never passed $150 dollars up until that point, his data usage bill for that November was $59,000. After calling the company to complain, they told him that his bill was wrong and actually $83,000 in overage charges due to the enormous data usage for the downloading of his movies. He has since negotiated a bill all the way down to $3,195, a price which he is still fighting.

Britney Baker is a freelance blogger who normally ranks prepaid phones for PrepaidCellphones.net. Her latest review covered the Tracphone.

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