Karenjeet Kaur Johal, 27, from the West Midlands was shocked when her mobile phone bill reached £153,000 after a 12-day business trip to San Francisco
A businesswoman has been left reeling after accumulating a staggering £153,000 phone bill over just twelve days in San Francisco – with one individual call alone racking up £37,000.
Karenjeet Kaur Johal, 27, was stunned when her mobile contract provider Currys Business sent an email revealing her May bill had reached £57,386.
She raised concerns and claimed the bill was still under review when her June statement landed – totalling £96,098.
Read more: Birmingham’s worst roads for speeding fines
It emerged the business owner had been using her mobile abroad during a work trip without any data spending caps or roaming packages in place.
Karenjeet claimed she requested a £100 data limit when establishing the account – however, emails from Currys suggest there’s no evidence of this in the telephone call transcripts.
She stopped the payments after receiving a message from Monzo informing her the entire £150,000 was due to leave her account.
Following contact from SWNS, her network and billing-services provider O2 cancelled the charges “as a gesture of goodwill”.
However, Karenjeet remains dissatisfied – stating the missed payment has impacted her property company’s credit rating.
“I was just so shocked,” she said. “There is no way I could have paid this.
“My bill has never gone above £68 and I travel abroad every month.
“I received no warning, no alerts, and no spending notifications during my time in the US.
“It is completely unacceptable for a charge of this scale to accrue without a single notification.
“This shows a failure to safeguard customers from catastrophic errors.
“Only after public intervention did O2 agree to remove the disputed roaming charges, that decision does not begin to address the damage caused by their failure, which led directly to a default on my company and a loss of over £200,000 in revenue.”
Karenjeet was travelling overseas for business engagements between May 5 and May 18.
Her invoices indicated she consumed 34,000kb of data on telephone calls in May, and 56,175kb in June – substantially exceeding her allowance.
The costly calls occurred between May 5 and May 18, but were split across two invoices, with the most expensive single call amounting to £37,000.
She explained she was utilising her mobile to conduct business communications.
Karenjeet contacted O2 via email and even travelled to their London headquarters, but was repeatedly informed she would need to settle the substantial bills.
The entrepreneur, who has run her company for five years, stated: “This has been really damaging for my business and has cost me a lot of money in lost contracts.
“It must have been a billing error.
“I used my phone as I usually would and the bills I have don’t even make sense.
“It’s all on data and says I made about fifty calls in just one minute: that isn’t even possible.”
An O2 representative commented: “When Ms Kaur signed up to a business contract with Curry’s, she actively opted out of spending and roaming caps which would have prevented her from incurring roaming charges whilst travelling in the US.
“While we are not responsible for the management of Ms Kaur’s spend caps, given the significant costs involved in this particular case, we have agreed to waive all charges as a gesture of goodwill.”