A young entrepreneur from the West Midlands has described her shock after receiving a mobile phone bill totalling an astonishing £153,000 following a business trip to America.
A Staggering Sum Accrues Over Twelve Days
Karenjeet Kaur Johal, a 27-year-old business owner from Birmingham, was on a work trip to San Francisco between May 5 and May 18. She used her mobile for normal business communications, unaware that costs were spiralling out of control without any roaming package or spending cap in place.
Her nightmare began when her provider, Currys Business, emailed her a bill for £57,386 for May. While she queried this, her June statement then arrived, demanding a further £96,098. The combined charges left her facing a debt of £153,484, with one single call allegedly costing £37,000.
Disputed Caps and a Fight for Resolution
Karenjeet insists she requested a £100 data limit when setting up her business contract. However, her network and billing provider, O2, stated that she had "actively opted out" of spending and roaming caps. Correspondence from Currys indicated no evidence of her requested cap in telephone call transcripts.
Faced with the impossible demand, she stopped the payments after her bank, Monzo, notified her the full amount was due to leave her account. She contacted O2 repeatedly, even travelling to their London headquarters, but was initially told she would have to pay the colossal sum.
"I was just so shocked," Karenjeet 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."
Goodwill Gesture Fails to Repair Business Damage
Following contact from the media, O2 agreed to waive all the disputed charges "as a gesture of goodwill". Despite this, the businesswoman remains deeply dissatisfied. She states the missed payment caused a default on her property company's records, damaging its credit rating and leading to a loss of over £200,000 in revenue from cancelled contracts.
"This has been really damaging for my business and has cost me a lot of money," she explained. "It must have been a billing error. The bills I have don't even make sense... It says I made about fifty calls in just one minute: that isn't even possible."
Invoices showed she used 34,000kb of data on calls in May and 56,175kb in June, vastly exceeding her allowance. An O2 spokesperson reiterated that while they were not responsible for managing her spend caps with Currys, they had taken the decision to cancel the charges due to the exceptional sum involved.
