Never Download Friends Via Your Mobile Phone

I'm sure many mobile users love Friends, the TV sitcom originally broadcast between 1994 and 2004, but I'm not really sure how many Friends fans would pay $21,000 for some episodes of the show. I guess not even one.

However, Daily Telegraph, the famous British newspaper, reports that a woman from UK used her husband's mobile phone to download four episodes of Friends. She "programmed" the downloads in the UK, but her husband, a city executive, flew to Germany on a business trip, so the (supposedly funny) Friends episodes were downloaded while on German territory.

Since the man had and probably still has an unlimited plan from Vodafone, the data transfer would have been free inside the UK. Unluckily for him, outside the country things are a bit different, and after returning from Germany he found out he has to pay a £11,000 bill (about $21,000 or 14,000 Euro). All this because his wife couldn't stand living another day without new episodes with Rachel, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Chandler and Ross.

Letting aside the fact that I can't think of any reason why anyone would want to download Friends so badly, the Vodafone bill is obviously huge and unjustified. An episode of the sitcom runs for about 22 minutes, so 4 of them make 88 minutes of video. This means Vodafone charged about $230 for every single minute of Friends, which is absurd, even if the customer was abroad.

This is not the first case when a mobile operator sends unjustified bills following data downloads made from abroad, therefore the European Union has advised carriers to lower their fees for data transfers and text messaging while overseas.

The man who received the $21,000 bill will probably not have to pay it (not all at least), since it's clearly not worth that much. Anyway, I can't help asking myself if, after the incident, the man and his wife are still... well, friends.


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