An oil field worker in western Canada was shocked this month to be charged 85,000 dollars for surfing the Internet on his new mobile phone, local media said.<\/p>\n
Calgary resident Piotr Staniaszek, 22, had signed up for Bell Canada’s cellular phone service at about 150 dollars per month, with unlimited mobile Web browsing.<\/p>\n
He believed the plan allowed him to use the phone to connect with his computer, using it as a modem to download a lot of data, high-definition movies and other bandwidth-hungry applications.<\/p>\n
But when his first bill arrived in the mail, Staniaszek realised to his horror that the company was charging him on a per-kilobyte basis for Internet downloads.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t know what to think. I thought there was probably a mistake,” he told public broadcaster CBC. “I told them I wasn’t aware that I would be charged for hooking up my phone to the computer.”<\/p>\n
A spokesman for Bell said the company will adjust Staniaszek’s bill to 3,243 dollars, as “a measure of goodwill.”<\/p>\n
But Staniaszek said he still plans to try and fight it, “because I didn’t know about the extra charges. Nobody explained any of this to me.”<\/p>\n
“The thing is, they’ve cut my phone off for being like 100 dollars over,” he told CBC News. “Here, I’m 85,000 dollars over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on.”<\/p>\n