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Dodgy data

Faulty iPhone leaves owner with €23,196 phone bill

A man’s phone was downloading massive amounts of data without his knowledge – leaving him with a bill for thousands.

A BRITISH MOBILE network has apologised after selling a customer a faulty iPhone that saw him run up an uncontrollable bill worth over €23,000.

Essex man Chris Bovis first noticed something was wrong when his network, Orange, cut off his phone without any prior warning.

When he contacted Orange to inquire about his disconnection, he was told that his monthly bill payment had been rejected – which was understandable, as his monthly total had reached an eye-watering £8,907 (€10,927).

Furthermore, The Sun reports, Bovis was advised that his bill for the next month had already reached £10,000 (€12,277).

The 26-year-old brought his phone to an Apple store where it was found that the handset was faulty – with an unspecified error that led it to download and upload massive quantities of data on a near-continual basis without user consent.

The BBC reported that a replacement handset was given – but Orange still tried to charge him £400 per month to repay the total, and then to charge him a capped one-off fee of £300.

The mobile network has since admitted it was wrong to ask the customer to pay for a faulty phone, and has cancelled the bill.

“We are happy to reduce the bill to zero as soon as we have received confirmation of the fault from his manufacturer,” a spokesman told The Sun.

Read: NI committee wants to ban roaming charges within Ireland

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