Teen Runs Up $22,000 Verizon Bill

After a man added his 13-year old son to his Verizon plan, his cellphone bill rocketed to nearly $22,000.

In a month’s time, the boy downloaded almost 1.4 million kilobytes of data. The family didn’t have a data plan, so Verizon charged them by the megabyte. After initial reports about the story broke, Verizon agreed to refund the entire bill, which is pretty nice because usually they’ll just split the difference. The father said he would be removing his son from his cellphone plan.

Like credit card fraud, there should be some kind of fail-safes for this kind of incident. For instance, if the bill is over 500% more than last months, they call you up and say, “are you sure you wanna do that?”

Teen runs up cell phone bill of nearly $22,000 [AP] (Thanks to GitEmSteveDave!)

Want more consumer news? Visit our parent organization, Consumer Reports, for the latest on scams, recalls, and other consumer issues.