Unusually big phone bill with a twist.

Hi! First time posting! I work for call centers for a while but this particular story happened somewhere around 2010 when I worked for big mobile operator.

One day lady calls and claims that she just got her phone bill for last month and it has to be some mistake because it is stupidly high. She is laughing and apparently thinking it is indeed some mistake. OK, let’s check. She had two numbers on her account and for one of them, she got her usual 69 zł (this was in Poland, 69 zł is roughly 17$). Her second number though… over 12000 zł billed.

Now, it was fairly standard back then. It was the rise of smartphones era, mobile plans were not designed with internet in mind, so usually with typical plans you got like 100 MB of data and after exceeding it, it was ludicrously expensive. Every customer was warned to buy some additional data packs or to turn off internet access to avoid it. In case of complain, company policy was to cancel such billings under the term that customer agrees to enable some additional data plan.

So fair and simple, her second number connected with internet a lot. I told her that and asked her to fill a complaint and that probably it would be OK. if only… She got upset and told me that it is impossible that her second number connected with internet, that number is used by her son and HE KNOWS not to connect to internet. She insisted that it’s billing error on our part, and force me to make a case to our tech support. Uhhh… OK, I do it and promise to call back to her when I get response.

Few hour later I get details from our tech department, all of IP addressees she connected to with detailed info about time and data sent in each session. I call back to her, tell her that we checked and our info is correct. She start to scream and me and I clearly hear her son behind her shouting that we are bunch of thieves and he did not access internet. She claims that IP addresses are “just a number” and she wants to know names of the web pages. This isn’t really our standard service but situation is unusual so OK, I pass this again to our techs.

Next day I clock in and get few emails that this client called 7 times already and demanded to speak with me about “billing fraud”. I also get report from tech department with list of sites corresponding with IP addressees. I look at it and… it’s magnificent. Almost 100% of list are things like: gay-paradise.com, bigblackgays.com, manlylove, gay dating sites, gay porn etc. all of it.

I call her, she instantly starts to scream and swear at me, her son from the background yells and swears even louder. I try few times to just tell her that billing is right but she demands the names of the sites and claims that I don’t have it because it’s all fake. So after taking deep breath I slowly start to read the sites along with dates and amount of data transfer and they are still yelling. After two sites I notice that son suddenly gets quieter and stops talking, she does the same after one or two more. It’s just complete silence and I’m reading whole list containing of like 100 entries. i finish and tell her that none of this really matters, she can still file a complain and it will be cancelled but there is dead silence on the other side. Finally I hear quiet “goodbye” and she hangs up.

I looked up her billings few weeks later and she filed a complain but it was in “I’m terribly sorry, I have no clue that my son was doing that” vibe. What I’m most astounded is what was her son thinking, he had to know that we are able to identify all of it, so maybe he should calm her down instead of putting more oil to her fire.