Man Receives $28k Bill For Watching Bears Game

Wayne Burdick, a typical Chicago Bears fan, was in Miami getting ready to go on a cruise but he had hours to kill before the cruise left port so he decided to watch the Bears game. The man was lucky enough to have a Slingbox connected to his cable box at home which allows him to watch live and recorded shows over the Internet anywhere. So like any Bears fan would do on the big game day, he whips out his laptop with his ATT Wireless card and connects to his Slingbox to watch the big game.

"So there I was at the Port of Miami. It was 1 p.m. Florida time. The Bears game was starting. The ship was not leaving Miami until 4 p.m., so I slid in my wireless card and brought up my Slingbox and watched the game on my computer." he said in a report to the Sun Times. "I watched for about 2 hours. Then I shut down my computer and cell phone, because it's expensive to use your Internet or phone when you sail out of the country."

Later when the man got home, about two weeks after the cruise, the man finds his new ATT bill which usually runs about $220 but this time was the tune of $28,067.31!

The man called ATT because they had surely made a mistake, but they informed him that the bill was correct and that he was charged international rates for the Internet use which is 2 cents per kb. Of course he explained that he was not at sea but in port and his cell phone was still working without roaming. The best ATT could do for the man was to reduce the bill down to $6,000.

Let this be a lesson to all, if you are 'near' international borders - you may too have the same result.