British Woman gets hit with a $42k cell phone bill

[cpvr]

Wow, I think this has to be the highest cell phone bills I've ever seen and I hope she gets her money back somehow.

Check this:

Huge Cell Phone Bill Of $42,000 Stuns British Woman

When a British woman on vacation in South Wales bought a cheap mobile phone because her own cell couldn't pick up the local signal, she never expected to be slapped with a bill for the equivalent of more than $42,000.

Yet that's just what happened to a horrified Anne Roberts of Devon who thought she was just buying a £20 pay-as-you-go phone.

“I had a text from the bank saying I had to pay funds in," she told The Sun. "I put my card in the machine and found I was £27,210.72 in the red.”

A technical glitch had mobile phone giant Orange siphoning off the equivalent of $187.20 an hour or more than $31 every ten minutes from Roberts' NatWest bank account. Orange had charged her account 792 times.

With a bank account overdrawn by more than £27,000 and collection agencies calling, Roberts was forced to cut short her holiday. It took two days to straighten out the mess but Orange finally apologized and refunded the money.

"We have identified a technical issue resulted in multiple card payments being taken from her account for the purchase she made in our Carmarthen store," an Orange spokesman told The Daily Mail. "We understand this situation has been upsetting for Mrs Roberts and we apologize unreservedly for the inconvenience it has caused."

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...?utm_hp_ref=tw

What does everyone think about this? What would you do if you got slapped with a huge payment like this - even if its just an error? I think its very ridiculous.

[SpunkiSpirou]

All I can say is its Orange init?

I had an issue with them ages ago with my answer machine (which then ended up breaking afterwards). Topped up my phone with £10 (around $20) because I had a voicemail I needed to listen to. Listened to the voicemail, deleted it etc, and checked my calltime balance afterwards and it said my remaining balance was 79p (around $1.58), and I'd been on the voicemail number for less than 5min yet it had cost me £9.21 ($18.42).

Phoned up Orange from a different phone and complained about it, and they said it should have charged me like 45p or summat, I can't remember it was ages ago, and they weren't sure why £9+ had been deducted.

Lest they put it back on though.

And then later they brought out these PIN numbers for voicemail so you could call your voicemail number from other phones. So set that up.

I then try calling it from Vodafone and it tells me the PIN number is incorrect. Phone it from O2, same again. Phone it from the Orange phone, still says incorrect PIN.

Phoned up Orange to complain (again) and they had on their system the exact PIN number I was typing in, so they weren't sure why it wasn't working. They reset the PIN to something else and gave me the new PIN over the phone. I then go and call voicemail again and it just keeps saying incorrect PIN number over and over, and then eventually it locks me out of my own voicemail service. Fucking morons.

Anyway someone phoned my Orange and I didn't answer and they said 'Whats happened to your message?' as in the message that plays before the bleep - which took me bloody ages to record and get it right - and I phoned my own voicemail after this and it just said "Welcome to Orange answerphone, the person you've called is not available, please leave your message after the tone," -boop- Pissed off about that and phoned them up, why have you cleared my voicemail message? Something about a system error and all voicemail messages had accidentally been reset. -_- Ugh.

And then eventually it just broke altogether and sort of deleted itself so now there isn't a voicemail on it at all - which I was even more annoyed about because there was like the worlds most important voicemail on there that I needed to listen to and the morons at Orange did nothing to fix their stupid network to let me listen to it.

So all in all, Orange is a shit network, I should know I've been with them for 14 years, when I go abroad Vodafone is going to be the number in use because of the 'Vodafone Passport' option they have.

[cpvr]

@SpunkiSpirou All I know is if I ever got hit by a bill like that, they can have fun trying to collect it from me. It's way too high. That's like a year or two worth of working hard, pulling long hours, just to go to a bill. Screw that. Unless you set up payment plans that are cheap and worth doing so.

[SpunkiSpirou]

@SpunkiSpirou All I know is if I ever got hit by a bill like that, they can have fun trying to collect it from me. It's way too high. That's like a year or two worth of working hard, pulling long hours, just to go to a bill. Screw that. Unless you set up payment plans that are cheap and worth doing so.

I've got Barclays trying to get me to pay them more when it was them that already agreed to the new payment plan.

[cpvr]

I've got Barclays trying to get me to pay them more when it was them that already agreed to the new payment plan.

I don't play with debt collectors. Screw that. My credit is already bad, so why pay up? No need for it especially if shit happened and you couldn't pay them. I get calls sometimes for companies that want me to fork over money. If I could, I would file for Bankruptcy just to get rid of the bills or something. I'll pay them one day maybe, but not now.

[tldr]

All I can say is its Orange init?

I had an issue with them ages ago with my answer machine (which then ended up breaking afterwards). Topped up my phone with £10 (around $20) because I had a voicemail I needed to listen to. Listened to the voicemail, deleted it etc, and checked my calltime balance afterwards and it said my remaining balance was 79p (around $1.58), and I'd been on the voicemail number for less than 5min yet it had cost me £9.21 ($18.42).

Phoned up Orange from a different phone and complained about it, and they said it should have charged me like 45p or summat, I can't remember it was ages ago, and they weren't sure why £9+ had been deducted.

Lest they put it back on though.

And then later they brought out these PIN numbers for voicemail so you could call your voicemail number from other phones. So set that up.

I then try calling it from Vodafone and it tells me the PIN number is incorrect. Phone it from O2, same again. Phone it from the Orange phone, still says incorrect PIN.

Phoned up Orange to complain (again) and they had on their system the exact PIN number I was typing in, so they weren't sure why it wasn't working. They reset the PIN to something else and gave me the new PIN over the phone. I then go and call voicemail again and it just keeps saying incorrect PIN number over and over, and then eventually it locks me out of my own voicemail service. Fucking morons.

Anyway someone phoned my Orange and I didn't answer and they said 'Whats happened to your message?' as in the message that plays before the bleep - which took me bloody ages to record and get it right - and I phoned my own voicemail after this and it just said "Welcome to Orange answerphone, the person you've called is not available, please leave your message after the tone," -boop- Pissed off about that and phoned them up, why have you cleared my voicemail message? Something about a system error and all voicemail messages had accidentally been reset. -_- Ugh.

And then eventually it just broke altogether and sort of deleted itself so now there isn't a voicemail on it at all - which I was even more annoyed about because there was like the worlds most important voicemail on there that I needed to listen to and the morons at Orange did nothing to fix their stupid network to let me listen to it.

So all in all, Orange is a shit network, I should know I've been with them for 14 years, when I go abroad Vodafone is going to be the number in use because of the 'Vodafone Passport' option they have.

Lol, £10 is more like $15...doubling the dollar-pound hasn't worked for almost three years, the pound is losing its strength! Personally I think they should pay her £8,000 in compensation, for her lost vacation time, the fees she probably incurred from being so negative, lost time dealing with the mess, and just for the unpleasantness of the fiasco.

I don't play with debt collectors. Screw that. My credit is already bad, so why pay up? No need for it especially if shit happened and you couldn't pay them. I get calls sometimes for companies that want me to fork over money. If I could, I would file for Bankruptcy just to get rid of the bills or something. I'll pay them one day maybe, but not now.

I've never been in debt or borrowed money from an institution, but I don't think that's very healthy for your credit, I'd assume it'd render it impossible to fix after a certain period of time.

[cpvr]

@tldr My credit was screwed when my car got re'pod because I got locked up. You can't fix that damage, it takes 7 years for your credit to reset itself - especially in the States.

[tldr]

@tldr My credit was screwed when my car got re'pod because I got locked up. You can't fix that damage, it takes 7 years for your credit to reset itself - especially in the States.

Oh, I don't have credit, so I wouldn't know, very ignorant on the subject, haha.

[cpvr]

Oh, I don't have credit, so I wouldn't know, very ignorant on the subject, haha.

Ya, but credit makes the world go round. Especially in America. You need to have some type of credit to get a bank loan, car loan, etc. Some credit card companies/local stores may help you out by allowing to get credit through them and it builds up like that.

[tldr]

Ya, but credit makes the world go round. Especially in America. You need to have some type of credit to get a bank loan, car loan, etc. Some credit card companies/local stores may help you out by allowing to get credit through them and it builds up like that.

Haha, I don't think I'll ever need any loans, I'm renting a house and own the car I drive right now.