Shocking phone-bill horror stories motivate regulators

Kerfye Pierre's thanks for helping out victims of Haiti's earthquake? A $35,000 bill from T-Mobile.

Pierre tells CNN that she racked up about $35,000 while texting family and friends from Haiti with the news that she had just survived the devastating earthquake. T-Mobile offered to waive voice plans for Americans who were volunteering there after the crippling disaster, but Pierre said she didn't realize that the waiver didn't include text messages.

The company has now reduced her bill to approximately $5,000, but Pierre says she still can't pay that.

"I would be OK to pay for it if everything was disclosed, and I knew upfront that, if I used this part of the service [data and texts], I would be charged," she told CNN. "But I did not know."

The Federal Communications Commission voted today to explore the issue of cell-phone-bill sticker shock, and will decide whether cell-phone companies must do a better job of informing customers when they are about to be charged extra for text and data charges. The FCC may rule that companies must send text-message alerts to customers when they reach their plan's data limits or are incurring roaming charges.

[Related: Reasons to drop the iPhone]

According to the Washington Post, two Republican commissioners voiced concerns that the rules could raise costs for the cell-phone companies -- and that such costs would then translate into more expensive plans for customers.

An FCC survey found that millions of Americans have suffered some kind of "bill shock" from a cell-phone bill. Film publicist Reid Rosefelt, for instance, went to Canada for five days for a film festival and returned with a $1,723 bill from AT&T. He said he received no email or text telling him he was using excessive data on his phone, and that he didn't know how to turn off data services to avoid the charges.

The L.A. Times wrote about several iPhone customers who learned that their phones were automatically set to enter "roaming" mode when they entered a foreign country, even though Apple and AT&T insisted the default mode was for roaming to be off. One man used his camera to take just two photos while traveling and racked up a $500 bill.

Massachusetts resident Robert St. Germain received an $18,000 bill in 2006, after his cell-phone company failed to inform him that his free data service was expiring. The FCC convinced St. Germain's provider to drop the bill this year, PC World reports.

Verizon recently announced that it will refund $50 million in unexplained fees it charged customers, reportedly following an FCC investigation into a huge number of complaints. The fees were levied for data plans customers hadn't ordered, or for when customers accidentally accessed the Internet and immediately closed the application. Last year, Sprint paid a $17.5 million settlement over allegations that the company was improperly collecting money for customers to end their contracts.

(Photo of cell phones: AP)

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