Shocking phone-bill horror stories motivate regulators

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A volunteer's thanks for helping out victims of Haiti's earthquake? A $35,000 bill from X-Mobile.

Example:

1. that she racked up about $35,000

A volunteer tells CNN that she racked up about $35,000 while texting family and friends from Haiti with the news that she had just survived the devastating earthquake. X-Mobile offered to waive voice plans for Americans who were volunteering there after the crippling disaster, but she said she wasn’t aware of one exception in the scheme.  “The fact  that the waiver didn't include text messages needs to be stressed,”  she said.  “What the mobile company did was unfair to users.”

The company has now reduced her bill to approximately $5,000, but the volunteer doubts about where she can find money to pay that.

"I would be OK to pay for it if everything was disclosed, and I knew upfront that, if I used this part of the service [data and texts], I would be charged," she told CNN. "But I did not know."  The question is whether she has to be responsible for that amount of money.

The Federal Communications Commission voted today to explore the issue of cell-phone-bill sticker shock, and will decide whether cell-phone companies must do a better job of informing customers when they are about to be charged extra for text and data charges. The FCC may rule that companies must send text-message alerts to customers when they reach their plan's data limits or are incurring roaming charges.