Jay Levy went to the mailbox one day to find a 54-page bill from AT&T covering his family's three iPhones. Now an absurdly long bill printout from AT&T isn't anything new, but this one had a twist. A $4,800 price tag.
What happened? Well Jay and his family went on a Mediterranean cruise not too long ago, and they had their three iPhones with them. Now, they knew if they used the phones overseas, they'd incur massive charges so the phones were turned off for the entire trip. Unfortunately for Jay, that didn't mean he was safe. It turns out that even when an iPhone is off, it downloads email so you have your latest messages whenever you do turn on the phone. So while the phone was "off" it was still accessing international networks for a fee of around $25 per 20 megabytes downloaded.
Needless to say, Jay is not pleased with Apple or AT&T. The lesson here is to make sure you read every bit of the contract and familiarize yourself with the phone manual before you take it anywhere out of network. Who knows what those sneaky little devices are up to!