A man called NBC 7 Responds after he says his phone carrier charged him for using thousands of dollars-worth of data, while he was asleep.
Greg Sacco said he doesn’t do anything fancy with his smart phone.
“I just have it with me so if it rings, I’m there,” he said.
Greg said he recently replaced an old iPhone that was giving him trouble. One night, Greg said he had the phone charging while he slept when the phone was flooded with text messages.
“Must have been 60 or 70 text messages, one right after the other telling us that we’re over our limits,” Greg said.
The next morning he said he called his phone carrier Verizon to ask what’s going on. Verizon told him they would investigate what the text messages were about.
A month later, Greg received his monthly bill in the mail. It wasn’t his usual $197 bill, the total was $3,720.
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According to the bill, Verizon said Greg’s phone used more than 340GB of data in one evening. That’s the equivalent of watching 23,000 YouTube videos in one night.
Greg took his phone back to the Apple store where he said they told him there appeared to be a software glitch.
“They [Apple] deleted this phone, rebooted it, reloaded it and ever since they did that, nothing has happened,” Greg said.
Greg said he talked to more than a dozen people at Verizon trying to explain the problem but the bills kept coming.
So, Greg turned to NBC 7 Responds for help. We contacted Verizon to find out more about the charges.
“Verizon Wireless has erased my debt and eliminated over $5,200 in data charges,” Greg said.
Verizon eliminated the charges for the data usage and additional charges added after the jump in data occurred.
Verizon thanked us for bringing the issue to their attention in a statement a Verizon representative said, “we strive to provide the best possible experience for our customers, at every touch point. In this case, we did not deliver on that promise. We appreciate NBC 7 bringing this issue to our attention and will do our best to continue earning Mr. Sacco’s business.”
