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The $27,000 AT&T bill for watching the Chicago Bears
A man aboard a cruise ship in Miami watched his beloved Chicago Bears using his laptop and wireless card. The bill? $27,000.
Last November, Wayne Burdick was on a cruise ship docked in Miami when he suddenly said to himself: "I wonder how my beloved, infuriating, ugly-quarterbacked Chicago Bears are doing?"
So he got out his wireless card, opened his laptop, unleashed his Slingbox and began to pray. Surprisingly, the Bears beat the Detroit Lions 27-23.
As his ship sailed to the Caribbean, Wayne Burdick's heart was lighter than Joaquin Phoenix's sense of humor. On his return, his pockets were lighter too.
Because AT&T sent him a bill for $27,788.93. You know why it did that, don't you? Yes, it accused him of truly egregious behavior. No, not watching the Bears, but roaming.
Mr. Burdick channeled his best Mike Singletary and spent much time roaming around the customer service departments of AT&T. Even though he could prove that he was on that cruise ship and therefore still technically in Miami, he succeeded only in getting the bill down to $6,000.
So he contacted the "Chicago Sun-Times". With the paper's intervention, AT&T decided that Mr. Burdick must have been receiving an errant signal.
Either that, or he must have been pestering them so much and persuaded a newspaper to take on the case that perhaps it would have been an errant signal for the company to pursue the matter further.
