Man receives £22,000 phone bill for holiday TV downloads

A man has received a phone bill for almost £22,000 after downloading television programmes during a skiing holiday.

Will Pierce, 42, said that he and his son Louis, eight, had downloaded episodes of Top Gear and Kavanagh QC because their hotel had no English television channels.

He had assumed that the cost of the downloads would be covered by his £25 Vodafone data card, which gave him access to mobile broadband while abroad.

However, when he returned home from the five-day trip to Meribel, he was shocked to be given a phone bill for £21,716.

He had been charged per megabyte of data he received, meaning one television programme cost about £5,000.

"I nearly fell over when I saw the bill. It was just unbelievable. I never imagined it would cost so much to watch a few TV programmes," he told the Daily Mail.

"I'm amazed that Vodafone could allow an individual to run up such a huge bill without any warning or agreement of a credit limit. It's utterly staggering."

"There's no warning when you log on how much it will cost a minute or a counter on the screen telling you what it is costing. If you ran up such a bill on your credit card while overseas you'd get a call checking that it is you who is spending so much."

Vodafone has said it will waive the bill. A spokesman said: "Such bills are exceptionally rare and we have an investigation under way."

credited to telegraph.co.uk