Canadian man gets $85,000 phone bill

Piotr Staniaszek, a 22-year-old oil and gas well tester in rural northwest Alberta, became a figure of international media attention this week when his father went to the press to complain about the size of his son's bill.

Staniaszek's father, also named Piotr Staniaszek, said his son thought he could use his new phone as a modem for his computer as part of his C$10 unlimited browser plan from Bell Mobility, a division of Bell Canada. He quickly connected the phone to his PC and hit the web. He downloaded movies and other high-resolution files unaware of the charges they would incur.

The worst part? Bell Mobility just let him keep racking up the charges. "The thing is, they've cut my phone off for being like $100 over. Here, I'm $85,000 over and nobody bothered to give me a call and tell me what was going on," Staniaszek told CBC News.

Staniaszek explained to CBC News: "I told them I wasn't aware that I would be charged for hooking up my phone to the computer. I'm going to try and fight it because I didn't know about the extra charges. Nobody explained any of this to me."

Bell has since made a "goodwill gesture" and reduced Staniaszek's bill to a mere $3,243, calcluated on charging him "the best data plan available for using cellphones as a modem", as company spokesman Mark Langton explained.

Langton added that Staniaszek "should have known that using the cellphone as a modem wasn't part of his data plan, and that it wasn't 'accidental'". He concluded: "When the customer downloaded the software to do so, a warning came up that said there would be additional data charges on top of the mobile browser plan."