[eradicator]

while travelling to New York.

Schoolgirl runs up a £3,800 phone bill by uploading pictures onto Facebook while on holiday in the U.S.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z2ZLjO8mSC

Quote:

A schoolgirl enjoying a dream holiday ran up a £3,800 bill after uploading pictures of her trip onto Facebook with her mobile phone.
Casey Snook, 14, used the website to post regular updates about her time in New York.
She eagerly told friends about her visits to the Empire State Building, Central Park and Times Square and uploaded a series of pictures with her iPhone.
But she was unaware of the massive bill until her father’s bank account - which funded the phone - suddenly went overdrawn after the holiday.

Phone company Orange said she ran up the charges by using Facebook with data roaming - a service which enables internet access abroad.
Her mother, Kate Snook, 43, a catering assistant, accused the company of 'extortion'.

She said: 'When I heard about it I felt physically sick. Casey was very upset and embarrassed and I was in tears.
'I can’t believe that a company would let a bill which is usually £50 get up to that level. Did they not worry the phone had been stolen?

'She was only using it for the normal teenage stuff, updating her friends with what she was up to and this and that.
'It was an experience - we visited the Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, Grand Central Station and the Whispering Wall. She was just using Facebook like a normal teenager to tell her friends.'
Casey, of Hengrove, Bristol, jetted off to the Big Apple with her mother on May 27.

Four days into the trip the teenager received a text from Orange warning she had gone over her internet data limit - and her bill had gone from its usual £50 to £320.
The company barred the teen from sending any more text messages or making calls - but did not block her data roaming.
Mrs Snook told Casey to stop using her phone until they returned to the UK in two days time.
But once the family returned home Mrs Snook received a phone call from Casey’s dad Victor, who pays the bill, to say his bank had told him he was overdrawn.

The firm also says it sent a message to Casey asking if she wanted to continue to use data after she had gone over her limit - and she clicked 'yes'.

But her parents are calling for an explanation as to why no further warnings were sent after the text message explaining the bill would be £320.
Mrs Snook said her daughter does not remember this, and believes many people would not understand the implications of continuing to use their phone.
'To be honest, I wouldn’t understand what a data cap was, and I don’t think a lot of teenagers would,' she said.
'This is about the extortion of a 14-year-old, and Orange is completely refusing to budge on the bill.
'The rates that are charged are ridiculous and I just don’t understand why another message wasn’t sent after the one that said the bill had reached £320. Why wasn’t one sent at £500 or £1,000?
'Her usual bill is around £50 - weren’t Orange concerned that her phone had been stolen? Anyone could press a button to say they wanted to continue using data.
'We are just going to have to pay it. I’m going to give her dad half of the money, but neither of us can afford it.'
A spokeswoman for Orange said: 'All Orange customers have a number of protections in place - customers are even automatically opted-in to a roaming data cap, which limits their charges to £49 for a set amount of data.
'Customers receive warning texts to alert them of their data usage and we have an app that helps them monitor data usage, and opt-in to a data bundle if needed.
'In this instance the customer received numerous text alerts which updated them on the roaming costs for the USA, and also updated them on their data usage.
'Once they had reached the limit of their data bundle, the customer actively opted out of our roaming data cap so that they could continue to use data, effectively removing the in-built protection from large data roaming bills.'

Here are some of the cool photos she took with her iphone



They are good, but are they $5000 of good?



It would have been cheaper to just buy a new phone when they got to new york, and a 2 year plan lol.

edited to add photos

[TheSlayer]

Best rated comments on the thread:

Quote:

Hang on, why is it the fault of the phone provider, your daughter pressed the yes button, she was sent texts saying she had exceeded her data. Why should the phone provider babysit the phone, it was in your daughters possession, looks like she is going to have to stop using her phone for a while.

Quote:

My 18 year old daughter has just got back from her first foreign holiday on her own to Rome with friends to celebrate the end of her A Levels. We're a family that doesn't travel much, but we know about roaming charges, and following my advice, the first thing my daughter did when she landed in Italy was to buy an Italian sim card. It's just common sense isn't it? As I say, I'm not very tech-savvy, but there have been plenty of stories in the media about his issue so if I can work it out for my daughter, so can other people! Mind you, my daughter didn't spend her days using data - she just used the credit to text us to say what a good time she was having. She waited until she got back to upload everything to facebook - that was also an option, surely, that the parents could have advised her to do? I'll probably get red-arrowed for saying all of this, but I have no sympathy for this mother - I'm sorry, but it's called taking responsibility!

Usually I side with the people when these kind of stories come out but in this story the company notified her if she wanted to continue using date after she had gone over her limit and she clicked yes. Her mom needs to teach her responsibility but that's not gonna happen.

I hope this teaches this young budding Patricia a harsh lesson.

On a side note, why does a 14 year old need a smartphone anyway? Is this a new thing where young teenagers go on vacation and they have to text their friends and upload their pictures on social media right away?

I may sound like I am 50 years old but I am in my early 20s and even I find this mind boggling.

[Kabal]

(07-17-2013 07:01 PM)master_thespian Wrote:  

Quote:

Phone company Orange said she ran up the charges by using Facebook with data roaming - a service which enables internet access abroad.
Her mother, Kate Snook, 43, a catering assistant, accused the company of 'extortion'.

She said: 'When I heard about it I felt physically sick. Casey was very upset and embarrassed and I was in tears.
'I can’t believe that a company would let a bill which is usually £50 get up to that level. Did they not worry the phone had been stolen?

'She was only using it for the normal teenage stuff, updating her friends with what she was up to and this and that.
'It was an experience - we visited the Empire State Building, Central Park, Times Square, Grand Central Station and the Whispering Wall. She was just using Facebook like a normal teenager to tell her friends.'

..

But her parents are calling for an explanation as to why no further warnings were sent after the text message explaining the bill would be £320.
Mrs Snook said her daughter does not remember this, and believes many people would not understand the implications of continuing to use their phone.
'To be honest, I wouldn’t understand what a data cap was, and I don’t think a lot of teenagers would,' she said.
'This is about the extortion of a 14-year-old, and Orange is completely refusing to budge on the bill.
'The rates that are charged are ridiculous and I just don’t understand why another message wasn’t sent after the one that said the bill had reached £320. Why wasn’t one sent at £500 or £1,000?
'Her usual bill is around £50 - weren’t Orange concerned that her phone had been stolen? Anyone could press a button to say they wanted to continue using data.
'We are just going to have to pay it. I’m going to give her dad half of the money, but neither of us can afford it.'

Of course the mother blames the company instead of herself for being a shitty parent, and/or her daughter for being a stupid social networking attention whore.

And of course both mother and daughter both take no responsibility for what occurred--it's all about how they feel.

Looks like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Doesn't the daughter at least know how to use Instagram?

Look how terrible your blacks and saturation are--c'mon, this is female photo-whoring 101.

[samsamsam]

   

The girl looks like a brat, you can sort of tell she wouldn't give a shit.

Poor mum gets pushed around by her daughter for sure.

[Kabal]

(07-17-2013 07:46 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

The girl looks like a brat, you can sort of tell she wouldn't give a shit.

Poor mum gets pushed around by her daughter for sure.

Wow.

Beady eyes.

Robust brow ridge, nose bridge; large nose.

Strong chin.

Wide mouth.

Shitty facial expression.

0/10 would not buy long-dated call options on.

[Rutting Elephant]

Manhattan has places with free wifi every few feet. What a moron.

[Kingsley Davis]

@ TheSlayer

"Quote:
My 18 year old daughter has just got back from her first foreign holiday on her own to Rome with friends to celebrate the end of her A Levels."

My 18 year old daughter has just got back from her first foreign fuckfest on her own to Rome with friends celebrating her A Levels as the excuse.

[sixsix]

Nah. Nah nah nah.

I don't care for this family and the mother-daughter couple looks like a good reason not to get a family in the first place.

But telecommunication companies are fucking cunts.

They're fucking expensive. They provide shitty service. They can charge whatever they feel like.
They got major tax dollars in the US. Not a real free market.

A good analogy is this girl eating at a foreign restaurant (without checking the menu) and being charged $5000,-.

Completely unreasonable. If it was thrice as expensive, okay. But thousands of dollars. For some data?
It's the same as charging $10.- for a GB of data, but $0.25 for a text of 1kB (making it $250,000 per GB).

I'm glad the European Union is cracking down on that shit.
Finally some consumer friendly interference.

[aphelion]

I agree she should have been reined in a bit but a 5000 whatever phone bill is pretty extortionate. 'Gotcha' charges are lame. If you drive 70mph on a 60mph speed limit road every day for 15 years without incident, it still sucks when you finally get that ticket.

[The Beast1]

When I was 17 I ran up an 800$ phone bill once.

The difference being, I thought I would beat the system by using my Treo's modem to dial up to some free dial up servers for a blazing fast internet experience of 64.4 kbps.

Verizon got smart and the next billing cycle came back with BAM data.

Hard lessoned learned. I put on the data block after that. You're an idiot if you give a kid a cell phone under your own name and not put blocks on it or give it unlimited data.

[NYJ]

(07-17-2013 07:46 PM)samsamsam Wrote:  

The girl looks like a brat, you can sort of tell she wouldn't give a shit.

Poor mum gets pushed around by her daughter for sure.

Bitch can't even put down the phone to take a picture.

[Tuthmosis]

(07-17-2013 07:59 PM)Kabal Wrote:  

Beady eyes.

Robust brow ridge, nose bridge; large nose.

Strong chin.

Wide mouth.

Shitty facial expression.

0/10 would not buy long-dated call options on.

But I bet she still has a crowd of thirsty orbiters climbing over each other to feed her ego on Facebook.

[Teedub]

Anyone that age who doesn't understand data roaming etc is a fucking idiot. Or, perhaps she thought the rules didn't apply to her? Wouldn't surprise me.

[Screwston]

How does a 14 yr old already look worn out and like a mid 20's party girl?

[thegmanifesto]

(07-19-2013 04:32 PM)houston Wrote:  

How does a 14 yr old already look worn out and like a mid 20's party girl?

McDonalds.