Bell Canada 85 thousand dollar monthly data bill, customer thought ten dollars unlimited

Another case of mobile operator (ridiculously) bad marketing.

Bell Canada offers a 10 dollar unlimited data plan for its mobile phone users (under certain limitations). A Canadian oil worker thought he could use his mobile phone as a modem and racked up - under that price plan - an 85,000 dollar - yes 85 thousand dollar (Canadian dollars, about 60,000 Euros, 42,000 UK Pounds, 87,000 US dollars) - phone bill in one month !!!

Ouch. So after all the hullabaloo in Canada as this story spread, Bell Canada came back and "kindly" reduced the data costs to about 3,400 dollars which would be the tariff for that amount of data usage under their best wireless data plan for that level of usage.

Now - here is where our friends over at MobHappy are totally right in commenting on the story. WHY doesn't Bell Canada warn its customer when its data charges are truly astronomical? Bell Canada regularly issues warnings if its phone call charges are 100 dollars above the normal, so why let this customer run up tens of thousands of dollars in billing.

This is a SHAME Bell Canada - You should be ashamed of YOUR customer service systems. NO WAY should you insist this customer pays 3,400 dollars for YOUR mistake. You should have sent him a warning much much earlier, and as you didn't - this customer specifically has been warned of charges on phone calls at the "100 dollar beyond" level so certainly you should eat up your mistake.

But yes, bad bad marketing, bad marketing, Bell Canada. Please fix this problem now!

Comments

[David]

Would you like the conspiracy theory?

Maybe this is good for Bell Canada' Monopoly? "Kindly" threaten any possible positive user experience with enormous bill shock and hope that the adoption of wireless data in your country is so slow that the market remains impossible for new entrants. Can there be any other explanation for it - if not why didn't they just tell this guy "sorry it was a mistake let us cancel your bill completely". They must have wanted this PR nightmare known about.

With this approach it's no surprise that Canada is the only industrialised country in the world with mobile penetration levels lower than the USA now is it?

Canadian parents must be having heart attacks when they see their children using their mobiles - just incase they are browsing the internet!

[Nancy]

I just received a $17,000 + bill from bell for one month. I had purchased a wireless internet and the sales guy said not to download to much and no problem. He never mentioned it was concerned air time. I almost died when I read my bill. I called this morning and the lady said she couldn't do anything because it was to much. She had to get in touch with a supervisor at Head Office and they would get in touch with me within a week. Why when the amount was growing and growing and growing did it not get flagged and phone me to warn me. I'm a single mom with 3 kids and in the midst of loosing my house. My stomach just aches' not knowing what's going to happen.

[Mike]

It's not just bell, it's Rogers too. The handsets they sold us (wifey and I) had no way of tracking mobile data usage... I purchased a 5 megabyte internet plan to be safe. I did nothing that to my knowledge would cause more than 5 megabytes of usage and lurked over her shoulder when she was on the mobile web(but I guess they count every single ping and add up data used by the services they already charge you for to begin with[such as mobile msn messenger application, music store etc]. The first 2 bills, which encompassed a month and 3 days added up to 1700 dollars. We were talked into getting the 10 dollar a month plan because it was cheaper than pay-as-you-go.. Go figure huh? Phones got cut off 3 days ago. I payed the first 560 dollar bill off in full. Which completely ate into our rainy day money and made us late on the rent... So we almost got evicted. It floors me that they let this happen. We're in a financial bind because of this... and with a 26 dollar late payment fee plus 2% interest monthly plus the plan fee it's going to end up costing us probably around 2500-3000 dollars by the time we paid it off...

What did we get for 3000 dollars? A bit of chatting on mobile msn, a couple of mp3s, and a silly little tetris game on both our phones. I took a drill to my phone, microwaved it and drove over it... That should minimize data usage and help us get through this hellish situation. We have it down to 1000 dollars right now, and im planning on taking a big chunk out of it once my tax return arrives... Then I'm going to call them and tell them not to bother reconnecting them. If they ask why I'll just beligerantly tell them where to put it and that other than the billing until the end of the plan to never contact me ever again.