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Man Gets $62K Bill for Mexican 'Wall-E' Download
Next time you are traveling abroad and feel the need to download a movie, you may want to think twice. If you don't believe us, just listen to the sad story of this man that called into CNN to chat with Financial Expert Clark Howard.
The caller, whose name is Alberto, was on a trip to Mexico when, as a gift for his nephew, he downloaded the film 'Wall-E' to his computer. Alberto, who used a mobile broadband card from his wireless carrier to perform said download, assumed everything was fine. He was wrong.
Upon returning to the States, Alberto received a bill from his wireless carrier requesting that he pay a total of $62,000. Alberto, stunned at the amount demanded in the bill, protested to his wireless company. The company -- which has remained unidentified -- relented and gave him what it considered to be a break. It dropped the bill from $62,000 to $17,000. We're sure that made Alberto's day. We can only hope that Alberto's nephew enjoyed what would have to be the most expensive movie-viewing of all time.
Let this man's misfortune be a lesson to the rest of us. Use mobile broadband cards carefully, or suffer the consequences (as in, bankruptcy). [From: CNN and Arstechnica]
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Comments
8
Subscribe to commentsplasalaiApr 27th 2009 4:23PM
im so tired of hearing about all these people that dont pay any attention. It's everyone elses fault that they dont understand their signed contracts and the ramifications of breaking the designated caps. If anything the phone company is completely in the right and should not take any money off any of these bills. Maybe that will open up the eyes of some of these people that just sign their name to things without knowing what it is.
SteveApr 27th 2009 5:03PM
Why do companies charge $60/month for 5GB on mobile broadband, which is $12/GB but then charge over $500 per GB on overage (ATT for example)? This guys plan must have been a lot more expensive than that. I know these companies CAN charge anything they want, but why be that greedy? How would you feel if you went to get your car repaired for $75/hr but after 5 hours they charged you $1000/hr? I got another gripe. Why can't they just cut off the download or warn you when you get to a realistic limit like double your normal bill? Why let it continue to $62,000?
plasalaiApr 27th 2009 5:09PM
its becasue there is a cap adn jsut like with minutes you get hit with huge overages also your not suppose to roam with those. He was in mexico which means he was roaming even if he had the international data plan it only gives you 150MB per month thats why it was soo high.
Also they do tell you how much that has been used. every carrier has software that must be installed on the computer in which to use the aircard and one of the main options will say something like usage so you can check that.
This really comes down to people not paying attention to the rules.
If your on the highway and your speeding and get caught and cant tell the cop sorry i didnt know the speed your still in the wrong.
brianApr 27th 2009 6:24PM
This is called negligence. People need to understand how critical and serious is piracy. I think all wireless carriers as well ISPs should track IPs linking to illegal download websites...
http://www.livbit.com
MadMikeApr 27th 2009 5:06PM
There is absolutely no reason for the wireless companies to charge that much. That is complete crap.
WaltApr 27th 2009 5:55PM
I think this company should be free to charge its essentially criminal rate to this man. He should also publicize the name of the carrier so that the carrier can be met with general derision and contempt for such practices in the national media spotlight. Hopefully they would lose a great deal more than $62,000 in business as people fed up with the carrier consider this the last straw. And the free market and free press punish this sort of practice.
EmmanuelApr 27th 2009 8:53PM
I totally love that they blamed Mexico... LOL ! priceless !!
DylanMay 7th 2009 9:49PM
That story is insane; I can't even begin to imagine what it was like to get a $62K phone bill, especially when that guy probably thought his downloading plan was somehow unlimited. Terrible! I wonder why he believed the plan was good to go--misrepresentation perhaps, or just a mistake? If there was any funny business going on, this particularly riles me because I work for the consumer advocacy website http://www.fixmycellbill.com, powered by a company called Validas, where we slash the average cell bill by 22 percent. It costs five bucks if you want to implement our suggested changes to your plan (the average consumer currently saves around $450 annually through us) but we will analyze your bill for free without any commitment of purchase, just to let you know exactly how many dollars your carrier is ripping you off by. I could go on and on about how shifty these cell companies can be in their attempts to make you overpay. We stop them and have currently put over $5,000,000 back in the pockets of consumers. You can check out Validas’s fixmycellbill.com in the national news media, most recently on Good Morning America at http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=6887412&page=1.
Good luck to everyone in keeping your wireless expenses down in this rough economy.
Dylan