The song says, "Christmas comes but once a year, and when it comes, it brings good cheer". Yeah, right. Ask Canadian citizen Piotr Staniaszek about that and the incredible example of Scroogish sentiment that resulted in cell phone operator Bell Mobility slamming the poor sap with a $85,000 Canadian phone bill just in time for Christmas. That's £41 grand of your actual English pounds because a subscriber took the carrier's advertising at face value and used his mobile phone for unlimited Internet surfing.
The whole sorry (and incredibly expensive) saga began when Mr. Staniaszek got a bright, shiny new handset along with a contract allowing him to connect it to his computer and download content.
Sold on the idea, just as Bell Mobility wanted, he then took out a $10 unlimited mobile browser plan and started using his mobile to surf the Web and download high-definition films and other bandwidth-heavy content. What's more, it actually worked and Mr. Staniaszek was pleased, and briefly, happy.
That didn't last long though, just until the first bill hit the doormat like a ton of bricks. It was for $65,000. Mr. Staniaszek's parents were worried but the man himself was sanguine, believing in Canada's well-known reputation for fair play and assuming that the bill was the result of one of those pesky computer glitches.
So he contacted Bell Mobility and explained what had happened. A nice, friendly call-cetnre agent listened patiently, empathised with his plight, told him not to worry and that an amended bill would be sent out post-haste.
And indeed it was. It arrived a couple of days later and this time was for $85 grand, up $20,000 on the original. The reason, Mr. Staniaszek's continued use of the Belll Mobility download service that is billed on a pay-per-kilobyte basis.
Piotr Staniaszek's usual monthly phone bill, (before he fell for Bell Mobility's advertising blandishments ) was in the region of $160 a month and, on many occasions previously he had been contacted by the carrier and notified if his usage was high enough to push his bill much above that usual limit. But not this time.
Mr. Staniaszek told Canada's CBS News, "The thing is, Bell Mobility has cut my phone off in the past for being just a hundred bucks over my limit. Then I reach $85,000 without knowing anything about it and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was happening. Since I got the bill I have told them that I wasn't aware that hooking my phone up to my computer would be charged for in this way."
AT first, Bell Mobility, stuck to its guns but as media worldwide picked up on the story, the carrier was deluged in a tsunami of bad PR and changed its tune.
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