After last week's Ovum report on research showing that, despite the blandishments of the mobile operators, subscribers are generally wary of using what they regard as dull, uninteresting and expensive 3G data applications and services, we now report on the sort of all-to-common and all-too-frequent billing cock-up that is giving operators and data apps alike a bad name.
It has come to light, not proactively through the operator concerned though, that a Vodafone subscriber has been charged more than half a million of our British pounds for a month's mobile phone usage.
The customer, James Abdale from Norwich, in the east of England, got a demand for £588,198 (plus the odd 15 pence too, of course) and has laid claim (one that is sure though to be beaten 'ere long) to be the recipient of the biggest ever personal phone bill for a UK mobile.
It seems that Vodafone's billing engine just churns out these accounts and doesn't have the ability to flag up something as glaringly, obviously and utterly erroneous as a half million quid bill for a single private customer.
Just consider the amount of usage we are talking about here - somewhere in the region of 300Gbit/s of data. Would it be, could it be possible to download such a vast amount of content in just four weeks? What could that content actually be? High-defintion first-run movies? Endless multi-player games? A chat marathon on a premium rate number? If such a feat were to be attempted, wouldn't the handset melt? And if it were all spent on smutty chat, wouldn't the subscriber have gone blind?
On receipt of his bill Mr.
» This story continues on page 2. Please click here to read
please sign in to rate this article
43539