Ian Dobsyn, from Manchester, returned home from a vacation in Portugal last week and found that he had been hit with a monumental £31,500 mobile bill from Yes Telecom.
The man had used his mobile broadband connection to download Sky’s “Prison Break” as well as some music and was shocked by the bill. “The figures looked like they had come down from the Moon,” said Dobsyn. “I just laughed. There had to be some mistake.”
After hiring a lawyer, the bill was brought down to £229, a number only slightly higher than his standard £150 monthly bill.
Danielle Mestraud, of Farleys Solicitors in Manchester, added that this episode should show customers to read the fine print before accessing television programming while abroad.
She added: “…service providers also have a responsibility. It would be better if subscribers were given a monthly maximum spend so they could be notified if they had breached it, rather than only finding out when the bill arrives. It would be prudent for the provider to contact the customer if their usage was unusually high.”
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O2 has noted that due to “extremely high levels of demand” for pre-orders of the upcoming iPhone 3G, their online shop has crashed and they are working to bring it back.
“We have made a limited allocation of iPhone 3G stock available for pre-order online, primarily for those customers that pre-registered their interest.”
“Due to extremely high levels of demand, the O2 online shop was temporarily unavailable this morning. We are working to restore the service back to full speed as quickly as possible.”
The carrier also added that customers who want to purchase the phone but cannot get it online should try to get to a retail store at 8 am on July 11th, the earliest time available.
“We’ve never seen any mobile device create the excitement and demand of the iPhone 3G,” said Ronan Dunne, CEO of O2 in the UK.
“We want to ensure that everyone who wants an iPhone 3G can get one so we’ll be working with Apple to continually replenish our supplies throughout the summer.”
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Hitachi announced on Thursday that among other changes to its HDTV production line, it will be teaming up with Panasonic to develop “next-generation LCD and plasma HDTVs that are thinner, more efficient and distinct from their competition.”
Hitachi claims they had an over $1 billion USD loss for fiscal 2007 in the HDTV business and the electronics maker is now hoping to move into the higher-end HDTV market to help make their money back.
The partnership with Panasonic will include the company buying glass panel components from Panasonic as well as purchasing full plasma panels built by the latter company beginning in 2010.
