In what has to be some type of Guinness Record, this guy got nailed with an $85,000 mobile phone bill. Do you think he hit the floor after opening the bill? Nope, actually, he opened the bill one month earlier and it read $65,000 and thought it was a mistake and so one Month later with $20,000 more in charges the bill ballooned to $85,000. Uh, how do you not call a Company when you believe that you have been grossly over billed? Not calling is just asking for trouble.

Bell Mobility has stepped up with some goodwill and offered to reduce the charges down to $3,243. Ouch, that’s still steep but he should be glad that they’re not sticking to their guns and looking for the full balance.

Source: Gadgetell

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Before we plow into this amazing matter of a huge mark-up on sms messages it is worth pointing out that this number is true when compared to data charges. Right then, lets stomp on…

Link: The Consumerist Says This:

Verizon and other cellphone companies mark up the cost of text messages by at least 7314% when compared to their rates for data transfer services.

Verizon’s max text message size is 160 characters. At 7 bits per character, that’s 1120 bits or 140 bytes. Without a text messaging plan, those 140 bytes run you $.15 (fifteen cents), according to Verizon’s website.

Compare that to the rate for data transfer (like when you would use your cellphone as modem). That rate is $.015 (one point five cents) every 1024 bytes.

That’s $.015 per data kilobyte versus $1.09 per text message kilobyte. In other words, a markup of 7314%. Other cellphone companies charge comparable rates.

Bytes are bytes. What makes a text-message byte so much more valuable than a straightup data byte?

Verizon didn’t return our requests for comment

Now, this is going to be a shock to a consumer… at least it would be if they had any idea about such things. Alas they are blind to most of it, including the excessive data charges that really should have vanished a year or so ago now. All the time the consumer keeps paying, the networks will keep charging.

This may not come as much of a suprise to people inside the industry as 9 times out of 10 they are making these amazing profits. We would expect them to stay quiet until questioned by the media and public en-mass. What do you think?

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