UPDATE: 2:20 p.m.
A Kelowna family is no longer on the hook for a $11,000 cellphone bill.
After publishing our story, Bell got in touch with Castanet to let us know the Keisarions “will be receiving a credit for the full amount of the overages.”
“Bell typically notifies customers once they start to incur overages,” said Bell spokesperson Jacqueline Michelis.
“In this instance, the customer received an initial notification, but subsequent notifications did not go out. We’re investigating the root cause internally and apologize to the customer.”
ORIGINAL: 12:45 p.m.
A Kelowna family is baffled after receiving a cellular bill for over $11,000 from Bell.
James and Stephanie Keisarion say a typical monthly bill for their family, for five lines, is roughly $580.
But this week, they received a virtual bill for $11,197.
“I had a mini heart attack,” James said.
He said he called Bell customer service Thursday morning expecting to clear up a simple billing mistake.
“I'm like, yeah, I understand, you know, people make mistakes and stuff.”
After about 40 minutes, he said the customer service representative would only offer a $600 discount on the bill of over $11,000.
“I laughed at him. He's like I can give you $601 off. And I said, so my bill is $600? I'm good. He's like, ‘No, I can only take $601 off,’” James said.
The couple said they contacted Bell on Nov. 8 to add additional data to their account. With children, James said they are notified if they go over a limit.
Contacting Bell to bump up their family’s data limit is not unusual, as one of their children occasionally blows their data limit, but the Keisarions' largest previous bill was just $800.
James and Stephanie say they are at a complete loss at to how they could have used more than $10,000 worth of data between Nov. 8 and 15 — especially considering they were completely without service for the last day of their billing cycle due to the mudslides.
“[Bell] can't tell me anything either,” James said.
After Castanet News reached out to Bell for comment on the situation on Thursday, the Keisarions say they were contacted on Friday and were told someone would get back to them by the middle of next week.
A Bell spokesperson told Castanet “we will look into this.”
Canada’s Wireless Code requires service providers to notify customers of excessive data usage to avoid “bill shock.”
The code states customers must “explicitly and knowingly” agree to pay the extra charges.
The Keisarions say they certainly did not agree to a five-figure phone bill. They have no intention in paying it.
“I guess I’m a Telus guy now,” said James.
