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A Quebec woman has racked up more than $60,000 in cellphone bills since July thanks to a very, very bad tip from her service provider.
When her two teenaged daughters received laptops as a gift, Wanda Rooney discovered they would not work with the dial-up internet service she subscribes. And there are no high-speed lines for her rural home in Marguerite du Lac Masson, so Ms. Rooney was told to get a mobile Internet stick. She tried, but they were sold out at every Bell store she visited.
What to do now? Call Bell, obviously.
"The guy on the line told me: Oh, it's no problem. Your cellphone has unlimited Internet, so you can just connect your phone to your computer," .
And that's when the problems started.
Despite being told there would be no extra charge for connecting her phone to her computer, one week later Ms. Rooney discovered she was saddled with a $47, 000 bill. All of her phones were disconnected and she was told she had to make a minimum payment of $300 for them to be reconnected.
Ever since, her cellphone bills have been at least five figures, including one for $12, 000.
After spending many hours poring over her bills to figure out just what the deal is, and many more hours dealing with customer service representatives, including the frustration of being told that using her phone as a modem for her computers violates Bell's customer agreement and then having to explain that it was a customer service representative who told her to do this in the first place, Ms. Rooney's nightmare finally ended this week.
She got a call from a Bell representative apologizing for taking so long to resolve her problem and informing her that all charges have been reversed.
"When I heard, I was so happy that I cried," Ms. Rooney told the newspaper. She also said she plans on remaining a Bell customer.
Dave McGinn