At some time or another we all have a phone bill that arrives with an amount due large enough to make you break a sweat. Perhaps you went over your limited minutes or text messages. Maybe you’re a parent with a teen who spent an entire month using data you ended up charged for many, many additional data usages. Either way, your phone bill might occasionally make you cringe, but it’s probably not anywhere near as bad as these phone bills.
$54,000
Ian Simpson is a factory worker, so his annual income probably comes in around this mark – if that. However, when he received a cell phone bill from Vodafone with a $54,000 charge on it, he laughed. That is, until he called the company to point out the mistake and they told him that he should read the fine print; his phone plan did not offer unlimited data and he used his data to download a LOT of television shows and other things. Now he’s bankrupt.
$62,000
An anonymous person who did not care to share his name went to Mexico on a family vacation and downloaded a Disney movie (Wall-E, for those who are curious) for his nephew to watch. Apparently in Mexico it takes a lot of data to download a movie, because his phone bill ended up being $62,000.
$83,700
Piotr Staniaszek thought he could use his Bell phone as modem as much as he wanted, but it just wasn’t the case. He used it so much he ended up with a bill that cost him $60,000 – almost $85,000 after late fees and charges he accrued after not paying the bill on time.
$200,000
Celina Aaarons has two deaf and mute brothers on her cell phone plan with T-Mobile. After traveling for a few weeks to Canada and neglecting to change her plan to an international one for the duration of her trip, she had the surprise of her life when she received her bill for $200,000. T-Mobile decided to reduce her bill to $2,500 and give her six months to pay it.
$218 trillion
Yahaya Wahab’s father died and he disconnected his father’s cell phone line from its provider. A year later, he received a $218 trillion bill in the mail for his deceased father’s disconnected line with a ton (really, a ton) of recent charges and usages. The company didn’t care that Wahab disconnected the line a year before or that the owner of the line was deceased; they are currently involved in ongoing legal action.
(Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
