Verizon Bills Family $18k For Cell Phone Use

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A family that was hit with a $18,000 bill from Verizon isn't having much luck disputing the bill. So far, the best offer Verizon has come up with is to cut the bill in half, so the family would have to “only” pay $9,000 for a month. :rolleyes:

The St. Germains’ problem erupted in 2006, shortly after Bob St. Germain renewed his wireless phone service contract, which included his cellphone and cellphones for his son and daughter. The two-year wireless promotional period allowing free downloads had expired, and under the terms of the new contract, Verizon began charging for downloaded kilobytes.
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This isnt even close to the first story about something like this. The charges are LEGIT, but come on. You'd think there'd be something in place to keep these kinds of charges from happening. All smart phones come with a ~$30 data plan. If someone is paying for per use data shouldnt there be a cap @ $30 worth of data?
 
jadams said:
This isnt even close to the first story about something like this. The charges are LEGIT, but come on. You'd think there'd be something in place to keep these kinds of charges from happening. All smart phones come with a ~$30 data plan. If someone is paying for per use data shouldnt there be a cap @ $30 worth of data?
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It would make sense. But why would Verizon do that if they can charge 18k instead!
Don't mention legislation either, or the free market people will foam at the mouth.
 
Why would Verizon (or anyone) tell you you're spending too much money on their service? Makes too much sense to help you out.
 
Cell phone billing is such a shady business. These charges are legit, but I think a month's leeway is not too much to ask after someones been on a 2 year promotion and probably forgot it was promotional at all.
 
Here's a thought, keep and eye on your bills,credit cards and bank accounts. You really don't have a choice in this day and age.
 
heatlesssun said:
Here's a thought, keep and eye on your bills,credit cards and bank accounts. You really don't have a choice in this day and age.
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Bills only come once a month. Your bank account wouldn't know anything about cell charges. I know I don't log onto to my cable or wireless provider's site on a regular basis.
 
Tell Verizon to go fuck themselves. Send letters to all three credit agencies preemptively. Go get a different provider. In court, argue that Verizon constructively breached the contract by failing to give you notice of such an outlandish bill. They actually terminated your service when they cut you off.

Set legal precedent.

The end.
 
What carriers are doing is akin to the government’s posting signs that the speed limit is 16.6 centimeters per millisecond, instead of 40 miles per hour, said Keshav, who testified before a 2009 US Senate hearing on excessive text-messaging charges.
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lols, that sucks though that Verizon is being this stubborn to a family that obviously made a mistake and basically forcing them to make a financil decision that could ruin their stnadard of living.
 
srangara said:
Bills only come once a month. Your bank account wouldn't know anything about cell charges. I know I don't log onto to my cable or wireless provider's site on a regular basis.
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You can check this stuff online, I have with Verizon years and you get real time usage reports both voice and data.
 
Verizon is not forcing the family to do anything. Verizon is choosing to allow this to ruin their business practices and affect cell phone billing practices in general. This is not a fucking arrest warrant. It is a bill, an illegitimate one at that.
 
If I was building a time machine in my basement pulling 1.2 jigawatts from the local power station, you betcha someone will come knocking on my door very soon.
OR
I'm downloading every single high quality movie from PirateBay, I betcha Comcast will send me a notice about my excessive bandwidth usage. I'm sure they will be happy to cap or disconnect my line.
Why does that not happen in this case?
 
I would just file a lawsuit against them. It won't take long for even a bogus lawsuit to wrack up enough legal bills for them to come to the table.
 
hasoos said:
I would just file a lawsuit against them. It won't take long for even a bogus lawsuit to wrack up enough legal bills for them to come to the table.
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It won't work if you are the small fry in the story.
 
The people were negligent in keeping up with their financial affairs. Verizon shouldn't have to babysit them. As the saying goes, "From 1 to 10, people are stupid."
 
FranklyShankly said:
It would make sense. But why would Verizon do that if they can charge 18k instead!
Don't mention legislation either, or the free market people will foam at the mouth.
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If you actually knew what the "free market people" believed, you wouldn't make such dumbass, ignorant comments. So either educate yourself or stop the trolling.

As far as this charge is concerned, what makes sense to you doesn't make sense in the business world (obviously, as you don't know what you're talking about). If the cap were put at $30, there's no incentive for anyone to pay $30/month unless it's forced on them. You'd have to be an idiot. If you use less than $30/month data transfer, why would you willingly pay more than you have to? Worst case scenario is you pay $30/month, so they might as well just do pay-as-you-go with a cap of $30. But again that doesn't make business sense. What would make sense is to put the cap at something reasonable, say $100.

As far as legislation, it's probably not required unless you can show that Verizon is doing this simply to screw over the consumer and is being intentionally misleading. If that's the case, then prevent them from doing so. If they refuse to help make this understandable, again you may have to force them. But you can't just legislate because it may be "unfair" to the morons.
 
People too stupid to actually read what they're signing deserve what they get. With luck the RIAA will sue this douchebag for stealing music.
 
First of all the "kid" is 26 years old, tell him to get off the freaking computer and get a job and pay his bill, and then punch him square in the mouth!

We aren't talking about someone that is supposed to be an adult who obviously didn't give a damn enough about his family to make sure he wasn't driving up his parents bill, he was to busy tethering his dad's cellphone to his computer for get internet access (I didn't see that mentioned in this story but it was in the more in depth story I read on this yesterday or the day before.)

This guys son was irresponsible and if he isn't willing to require his son to pay for his screwup then he should have to.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
First of all the "kid" is 26 years old, tell him to get off the freaking computer and get a job and pay his bill, and then punch him square in the mouth!

We aren't talking about someone that is supposed to be an adult who obviously didn't give a damn enough about his family to make sure he wasn't driving up his parents bill, he was to busy tethering his dad's cellphone to his computer for get internet access (I didn't see that mentioned in this story but it was in the more in depth story I read on this yesterday or the day before.)

This guys son was irresponsible and if he isn't willing to require his son to pay for his screwup then he should have to.
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I agree that the kid should get punched in the mouth. But the a-hole at Verizon who decided not to have their network send out a text message telling them when they had reached, I don't know, a bill of $500 should get punched too.

Actually, let's just line up everyone involved and have an asskicking contest on them!
 
How is it that a company would let you run up charges so much more than your monthly bill? It would make more sense to turn off part of the service if someone does that.
 
niconx said:
How is it that a company would let you run up charges so much more than your monthly bill? It would make more sense to turn off part of the service if someone does that.
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There's not that much incentive for them to do so. Clearly, revenue > cust sat for the telecoms.
 
It's obviously opportunistic price-gouging done by a company with no moral sensitivity to the welfare of their customers. Instead of "the company that cares enough to give great customer service" to a "strongarm loanshark" type shady business dealings.

Just like a loan shark the rate goes sky high if the can find the loophole.

I wonder how many billions of dollars they have made off of suckers this way.

And there is no valid argument when it costs $30 for 5GB to charge $18K for 1.2GB! And the only explanation is that they weren't on the plan? HOW could the cost of delivering kilobytes be SIX HUNDRED times greater than when on the plan.

The plan is just semantics, if it costs them no more than $30 to deliver 5GB, then it should cost $30 for each 5GB, whether you are on a plan or not!

This is just a way to trick people into paying $30 a month even if they don't use the internet because this way they are too scared to leave the plan because they know that they will get a bill for tens of thousands!

And the wording is tricky like the 40mph guy said, they say 10cents be kilobyte when they should say $15,000 per gigabyte! How can you seriously download a single kilobyte?
 
niconx said:
How is it that a company would let you run up charges so much more than your monthly bill? It would make more sense to turn off part of the service if someone does that.
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why? why would they do that?

"Sir, these people are spending way more on products from us than they signed up for!"

"holy crap we better stop them before they make us to much profit"

I know it sucks for the family, but this is what dumb people get. If your to lazy and ignorant to read your contracts and learn when your free periods are ending and your going to be billed then this is your fault, not theirs. I know its a steep price and im amazed their allowed to charge that much but if its in the contract then its your job to know about it, not just sign a contract blindly and hope it works out.

The fact that verizon is even willing to cut the bill in half seems like a nice move on their part. I dont go crying and whining to my ISP when I go over my monthly cap and they want to charge me extra, i watch my limits and know not to go over.
 
why not just charge the person $30 per 5GB, minimum $30 if they use a single kilobyte

That way you don't pay for your data plan if you don't use it that month (pretty rare)

But people that aren't on the plan would not be able to pay less than $30 if they use "data."

This way it is much more fair, they actually will make more money from people without a data plan because the minimum charge is $30, and they won't be able to rip people off that somehow misguidedly dropped out of the essential "plan."

Since 3MB costs $30 I doubt if anyone off a plan ever paid less than $30month for data!
 
P10-17000 said:
And there is no valid argument when it costs $30 for 5GB to charge $18K for 1.2GB! And the only explanation is that they weren't on the plan? HOW could the cost of delivering kilobytes be SIX HUNDRED times greater than when on the plan.
And what is the "valid argument" for people not being responsible for their own actions? This idiot never bothered checking to see if his father had unlimited data, so why shouldn't the owner of the phone be required to live up to their agreement?
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Verizon is the devil. They fucked me around a few years ago and put shit into my credit I didn't even ask for. They are a scumbag company.
 
The legality of clauses in contracts is not decided until it appears before a court, which this has not. All cases of this sort must be settled out of court because a precedent has not been set.

If a jury saw that they were using misleading terminology to trick people into joining a company where they can so conveniently make a customer be "non-plan" and thus subject to ridiculous fees far exceeding any normal penalty when compared to the cost of operation.

No company should be allowed to bill almost half a family's yearly income in a SINGLE MONTH for a device that normally costs them $30 month, six ten-thousandths of it!
 
No matter how you shake a stick at it, the contract amounts to nothing more than a trap. Verizon knows it too. They just don't give a shit.
 
If a company hides a clause where you sell your family to them, do you consider that valid just because the person signed it without noticing?

The rule of law is that contracts have to be somewhat reasonable.
 
Amazing that most of the responses here indicate that the average forum member has the reading comprehension of a 4 year old.

1) This happened in 2006 and such things weren't unheard of then.
2) The "26 year old" wasn't 26 when this happened so grow a clue.
3) The fine print does spell out the billing charges and if you're wit with a half a clue you understand a CONTRACT before using the service.

Geez, don't like it, move to Russia.


No one seemed to be the least outraged over the charges for 816,000 kilobytes of download
 
"After the monthly bill came, and Bob St. Germain got over his shock, he saw that his son had downloaded 816,000 kilobytes, a unit of data storage capacity, at a cost of $12,233."

Downloaded 816 gigs in one month.

Lol, just lol...
 
D3v01D said:
"After the monthly bill came, and Bob St. Germain got over his shock, he saw that his son had downloaded 816,000 kilobytes, a unit of data storage capacity, at a cost of $12,233."

Downloaded 816 gigs in one month.

Lol, just lol...
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er I think it would be 800mb...

anyway yes to you nerds its simple but its something that can catch out a lot of people. you really think your old man or most normal people would understand all this stuff? they should obviously put some sort of resonable limit. just like you cant spend 100 grand on your credit card
 
D3v01D said:
"After the monthly bill came, and Bob St. Germain got over his shock, he saw that his son had downloaded 816,000 kilobytes, a unit of data storage capacity, at a cost of $12,233."

Downloaded 816 gigs in one month.

Lol, just lol...
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That would be 816 MB (or 797 MB if you want to get technical), not GB.


One of these days, Google will start offering cell phone service as well. It's only a matter of time until they rule the world, but I'd still take them over Verizon.
 
w4ffles said:
One of these days, Google will start offering cell phone service as well. It's only a matter of time until they rule the world, but I'd still take them over Verizon.
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At least they give a shit about their customers and make products that everyone loves.
 
FoBZY said:
er I think it would be 800mb...

anyway yes to you nerds its simple but its something that can catch out a lot of people. you really think your old man or most normal people would understand all this stuff? they should obviously put some sort of resonable limit. just like you cant spend 100 grand on your credit card
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Oops... sry, late in the day heheheeh :)
 
heatlesssun said:
You can check this stuff online, I have with Verizon years and you get real time usage reports both voice and data.
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Well yeah, but after 2 years of paying the same amount every single month and then all the sudden being charged $18,000...come on, no one expects that kind of crap.
 
Speaking of Verizon, I had one of their wireless internet cards they route over their cellular network. One month we lost wired internet at our house for about 3 weeks so I used the card as it had "unlimited" plan. I normally used it for very light browsing on the go earlier. Plan was $80/month.

At the end of the month I got a letter that said they were terminating my contract and that my SSN was blacklisted from being allowed and future packages of a similar nature. They believed my 30GB of downloaded data was "far excessive". Never got hit with a bill for it though, I imagine that half-assed "unlimited" bit helped. :D
 
Even thought the bill is horrible, but still this is not Verizon's fault. They should pay for their stupidity to give cell phone to irresponsible kid ...

It is like they offer you the long distance service, but you refuse. Then you go ahead and make many long distances. When the bill comes, you complain that why it costs more than the long distance service. That 'kid' should be kicked out there to work to pay back his bill ...
 
I'm sorry guys, but it isn't someone else's job to babysit your ass. That said, the charges may potentially be challenged in court from what i've heard on this if it can be proven that this contract was unconscionable.

In my opinion, the bill is legitimate and i'm tired of hearing about people who get themselves into frickin trouble because they can't frickin read a frickin contract. However I have to say that Verizon deserves to have their asses kicked for this because this is not the type of PR that a company like Verizon wants. When you look at the fact that Verizon offers unlimited data plans for as low as $119 per phone, Verizon should be offering a deal far better than the reduced charge of $9200. I don't care if Verizon thinks these douches are at fault here(and they are), but bad PR can cost a company like them far more than $12000.

If I was a judge here, I would force those douches to pay 3x the ulimited plan rate to Verizon, and then i'd go and kick the ass of whoever at Verizon made this decision for bringing this much negative publicity. After I kick the ass of some individual at Verizon, i'd go seek this son out and smack him upside the head.
 
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