Teen Hit with $6,000 Bill After Using Facebook During NYC Vacation

[jeffrey]

Casey Snook, a 14-year-old girl from England, unknowingly racked up a $6,000 phone bill by uploading photos to Facebook while on vacation in New York City, according to a story published Friday in the New York Post.

During the five-day trip with her mother, Kate Snook, Casey snapped photos of the Empire State Building, Times Square, Grand Central Station, and Central Park. Eager to share her travels with her friends, she uploaded the photos to Facebook. But since Casey hadn't blocked her “data roaming” function, all that time spent on the Internet added up...

http://shine.yahoo.com/healthy-living/teen-hit-with--6-000-bill-using-facebook-during-nyc-vacation-185451599.html

[5MinuteMoneyTips]

Natural Consequences

Companies need to be creative in these cases. In some cases, they will provide a one time courtesy credit, however, not always. More companies need to team up with parents to teach kids natural consequences. Imagine if your phone company reduced the price to a couple hundred dollars with the stipulation that the teenager must pay the bill.

Jake Posey

[JoeP]

I am all for companies making money. However, the concept of "roaming" remains a mystery to me. It almost seems like cell companies colluding to allow non-subscribers to get taken advantage of. So the advice in the article about using wi-fi is a good alternative. In fact, we had a friend travel to Europe and were able to facetime in the hotel lobby or wherever wi-fi was available.

[bjl584]

I would think that in this day and age there should be an ample infrastructure of cell towers and service. There should be no such thing as "roaming" at this point. Back in the early and mid 90's in the dawn of cell phones service was spotty and unpredictable. But today, only the most remote areas don't have good service.

[disneysteve]

I can understand a modest charge if company A needs to process service and communicate it to company B, especially if company B happens to be on another continent, but $6,000 is ridiculous.

[ua_guy]

On one hand, the consumer needs to be aware of the charges they could potentially be on the hook for (and protect their device, or their child's device appropriately).

On the other hand, I consider "data roaming" charges to be a low-brow business opportunity, but I guess that's because I don't own the networks nor do I make the rules!