We've all found unexpected charges on our phone bills at one time or another. But nothing compares with the nearly $10,000 hit that Aliso Viejo resident Mark Elliot took from Verizon Wireless.
And even though it seems pretty obvious this had to be a mistake on somebody's part, Verizon's first instinct was to stick to its guns.
"We believe in the accuracy of the charges," Ken Muche, a company spokesman, told me after checking into Elliot's situation.
The company would eventually back down, but not before wiping out Elliot's checking account. More on that in a moment.
Elliot's cellphone nightmare began last week when he received a notice from Bank of America saying a payment had bounced on his online bill-pay service. He looked into it and discovered that Verizon was trying to charge him $9,993.88 for his April bill.
"I practically had a heart attack," Elliot, 56, told me. "Nearly 10 grand in cellphone costs? How could that be?"
He called Verizon. Elliot said a service rep laughed when she accessed his bill and agreed that it had to be an error. She said the company would drop the charge.
Then another Verizon rep called over the weekend. She said the company had double-checked its records. The bill stands. Elliot would have to pay up.
"The vibe I got from her was like I was some kind of criminal," he recalled. "I told her this couldn't be real. Who gets charged $10,000 for cellphone use? But she said I had to pay."
The bill showed $182.96 in monthly access charges, $5.17 in taxes and fees . . . and $9,805.75 in wireless Internet activity.
According to the bill, Elliot used his cellphone to upload, download or otherwise access more than 44,000 megabytes worth of data in a single month.
That's the equivalent of downloading about 11,000 songs from iTunes or 60 full-length movies.
Now, it's possible that Elliot is some kind of deranged Internet hog who spent the month squirreling away copies of "The Lord of the Rings," "Lawrence of Arabia" and all 17 episodes of "The Prisoner." But I doubt it.
"I'm a mountain climber," he said. "When I'm not working as a computer consultant, that's what I'm doing. I don't play on my computer for fun."
Also, guys who are running some kind of Internet scam typically don't turn to people like me, hand over their phone bills and bank records and agree to have their name run in the newspaper. That's just asking for trouble if you're not on the level.
