Most of us have been hit with an unexpectedly high cable or satellite bill, but not like this. One DirecTV customer in Ohio says that after she signed up for service from AT&T and DirecTV, she was slammed with a bill for more than $184,000.

The customer says she switched her phone service to AT&T about six months ago so that she could enjoy the small monthly savings that DirecTV offers to AT&T subscribers.

What she got in the months since, however, has been service issues and bills she didn’t understand. It’s unclear from the WJW-TV story whether she’d been keeping up with all her bills during this time period, but even if she had been delinquent on every bill for the entire six months, that wouldn’t explain why DirecTV was suddenly demanding that she pay $184,530.67.

She says that she tried to get AT&T’s attention and some help to figure out where the bill came from, but no one could help her.

“I know I don’t have that kind of money,” she told TV reporters.

Even after she brought in the media, hoping that the threat of publicity would force AT&T and DirecTV to figure things out, all AT&T was able to do was fix her account, not explain what happened or whether it would could happen again.

“We apologize for the billing error that occurred,” an AT&T spokeswoman told WJW. “We’ve reached out to the customer to resolve the issue.”

The six-figure bill is gone, but the other problems with her service are still happening. She told WJW that she planned to seek help from the state attorney general. We’d recommend reaching out to the state Public Utilities Commission as well.

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