Father Charged Thousands For Letting His Son Watch ‘SpongeBob SquarePants’
A British cell phone company is charging one London father more than $5,000 in data charges for allowing his son to watch six episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants during a camping trip.
British Telecommunications billed 42-year-old self-employed blacksmith Conan Sturdy $5,083 for data overages his ten-year-old son incurred one rainy afternoon, according to The Guardian.
Sturdy exceeded his 2 GB data plan by an additional 5.4 GB and was billed $940 per gigabyte. He says BT sent him a text message warning him he’d gone over his data plan, but he had no idea the cost would be so high.
“One afternoon it was pretty miserable so I let him watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Netflix, it was an afternoon’s worth. I thought there’d be a charge, maybe £30 or £40, as I received a text saying I had gone over. A charge is one thing but £600 per gig is another. I had no idea that the bill could be so high. I understand that BT is a commercial enterprise and has to make a return on investments for shareholders, pay for staff etc, but this seems massively disproportionate.”
The father and son went camping in the English countryside, at a cost of $10 per day, but got stuck inside one afternoon during a rainstorm. Ten-year-old Felix likes the catchy SpongeBob SquarePants theme song so the pair decided to watch the children’s cartoon over dinner. The resulting $5,083 bill was 60 times the cost of the camping trip.
SpongeBob: "Patrick, you're a genius."
Patrick: "Yeah, I get called that a lot."
SpongeBob: "What, a genius?"
Patrick: "No, Patrick"
— Humour Guide (@HumourGuide) September 9, 2015
The last time Sturdy went over his data allowance, the company cut off his phone so he didn’t think anything was wrong with downloading the cartoon. When Sturdy called to complain about his bill, however, he was told that department no longer existed, according to the Daily Mail.
“It is mad because they have a package that allows 10GBs of data a month for just £42 which they said I can switch to, but that doesn’t exactly help me with this huge bill.
“Whenever I have spoken to them so far, they have said it is in their terms and conditions, but I am just in shock, to be honest I don’t even have the money to be paying for this bill.”
It’s hard to know if people are good or bad just by looking at them. But if you see a man with a curly mustache, I’d be worried!
— SpongeBob (@SpongeBob) September 9, 2015
A BT spokesman has said his company is aware Sturdy may not have realized the extent of his bill and they’ll be waiving Sturdy’s bill as a gesture of goodwill.
[Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Nickelodeon]
