Man's £19,000 phone bill shocker (From Thurrock Gazette)
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Man's £19,000 phone bill shocker
2:30pm Friday 11th January 2013 in News
Chris Bovis
A MAN was left stunned after being hit with a phone bill for nearly £19,000.
Chris Bovis was puzzled when his phone was cut off by Orange without warning, but confusion soon turned to horror when he called the company for an explanation and was told his latest bill was an eye-watering £8,900 which was said to be due to internet usage.
He was then told next month’s bill would be for another £10,000.
Chris, 26, said: “My first reaction when I called Orange was to laugh as I just couldn’t believe it, but it stopped being funny when I realised they were serious.”
Chris asked Orange to switch the internet off his phone, which the company agreed to do, but he says this didn’t stop his Apple iPhone from continuing to send and receive large amounts of data.
Orange advised Chris to restore the iPhone to its factory settings, but this didn’t help either.
The phone company then asked Chris to make an appointment at an Apple store.
Staff there were also baffled, and replaced the iPhone.
Orange said as there did appear to be a fault with the phone, they would cap Chris’ bill at £300.
But Chris who lives in Burns Place, Tilbury, refused to pay anything above his normal phone bill. His partner, Joanna Russo, said it was then things turned nasty.
She said: “Chris was advised the £300 was not up for discussion and he must pay. Failure to do so would result in them sending a bailiff round for the full amount of £8,907.
“The debt would have a huge impact on both our lives as our house would be blacklisted, that’s if we’re left with a house.”
Last week Chris got a letter from his bank saying Orange had tried to take £19,000 from his account, but it had been rejected.
An Orange spokesman said: “We would like to apologise to Mr Bovis for any distress caused by receiving this unusually high phone bill.
“This resulted from a fault with his device and we are happy to reduce the bill to zero as soon as we received confirmation of the fault from his manufacturer.”
Comments(5)
SaveOurStanford
says...
12:24am Sat 12 Jan 13
I can turn off data easily on my android and just use it as a Phone ....
Its the customers responsability for the apps and usage so either he wants it for nothing or is just trying to get publicity.
I-say-you-say
says...
10:10am Mon 14 Jan 13
SaveOurStanford wrote:You say it's the customers responsibility but what if the customer is not aware.
Oh another Victim of iPlop who once showed of the new gadget singin & dancin and later realises its gonna cost him big time, They are Overated devices and i just silently laugh at the show offs on the train everyday with iPlop and Munster earphones. I can turn off data easily on my android and just use it as a Phone .... Its the customers responsability for the apps and usage so either he wants it for nothing or is just trying to get publicity.
This was a fault with the phone that he was only aware of when he got the phone bill. You don't expect these "high tech" I-phones to have this sort of problem (well I do which is why I refuse to have one but that's not the point). But nevertheless nobody sits there constantly checking their phone bill "just in case" there's a fault with their phone that runs up a bill like that!
SaveOurStanford
says...
12:10am Tue 15 Jan 13
I-say-you-say wrote:I disagree if you are paying £50 a month for a gadget i would be checking my balance every other day, I dont do contracts just for the reason that the companies make Huge profits on them and staff are so pushy.
SaveOurStanford wrote: Oh another Victim of iPlop who once showed of the new gadget singin & dancin and later realises its gonna cost him big time, They are Overated devices and i just silently laugh at the show offs on the train everyday with iPlop and Munster earphones. I can turn off data easily on my android and just use it as a Phone .... Its the customers responsability for the apps and usage so either he wants it for nothing or is just trying to get publicity.You say it's the customers responsibility but what if the customer is not aware. This was a fault with the phone that he was only aware of when he got the phone bill. You don't expect these "high tech" I-phones to have this sort of problem (well I do which is why I refuse to have one but that's not the point). But nevertheless nobody sits there constantly checking their phone bill "just in case" there's a fault with their phone that runs up a bill like that!
I would have brought outright a cheaper allternative to iplop and use a pay as go sim then you cant spend wht you have not got !
dawnmary1
says...
5:03am Tue 15 Jan 13
Thurrock Trojan says...
6:00pm Fri 11 Jan 13