@Dylan:

How does Validas get your online cellphone bill? Do you have to provide them your user ID and password? If so, that seems risky.

Also, this wouldn't have helped the person in question because he's not the in U.S. and I didn't see any Canadian carriers listed in your post. (My understanding is that few, if any, Canadian carriers offer unlimited service.)

Finally, would it have helped anybody in this case? I assume Validas compares usage to plans and suggests plans that best fit the usage. In this case, though, a hacker seems to have gotten control of the account and spiked the person's usage. Unless Validas analyzed previous bills and had recommended unlimited international calling (if such a thing even exists), these calls likely would have generated international roaming charges and overages.

In fact, unless you recommended a more expensive plan (to cut down on overages and other charges), the person would likely have owed more. For example, if your usage analysis said that he was paying for a higher-cost plan than he needed, and recommended a lower-priced plan with the user paying some minor overages every now and then, the user probably would have had a larger bill.

I assume that most people subscribe to higher-priced plans they don't really need, as opposed to lower-priced plans where they get killed by overages. This assumption is based on my suspicion that, after a couple of larger bills where you've been hit with overages, you'd likely have bumped your service up to a more expensive plan (more included minutes, lower per minute cost) yourself.

Steve

I feel awful for the guy just reading about his accidental $52,000 cell bill. That's outrageous! In response (and so no one else suffers a similar fate), I wanted to write a follow-up post on the topic of cutting cell costs. Specifically, thousands of people are achieving substantial wireless savings through the website http://www.fixmycellbill.com (by a company that I work for called Validas) that on average currently saves T-Mobile, Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and US Cellular customers 22 percent, equating to $482 annually, off their cell bills.

Here's a quick breakdown of how it actually works. Validas analyzes your online cell bill for free and calculates how much money you could be saving. It turns out that eight of ten wireless customers are paying more than they need to for their plans. Validas fixes these discrepancies by tailoring a customer's plan to fit their specific needs. If you choose, Validas provides a highly detailed and personalized adjustment report that, for five bucks, is emailed to your wireless provider in industry specific format in order to implement Validas's cash saving changes to your plan. If Validas can save you more than $5 on your bill, then this obviously provides a very cost effective solution.

Validas is becoming known as the preeminent advocate for the wireless consumer. Check out a feature about Validas on The Big Idea with CNBC's Donny Deutsch at http://www.cnbc.com/id/22782456/. Validas has also been profiled in the New York Times and Business Week.

Happy holidays, and good luck to everyone reading on lowering your cell bills.

Dylan

Unless the phone's owner was negligent (like having his phone get stolen and not reporting it), MTS should be on the hook for all the calls made by the hacker. If the hacker cloned the phone just from the owner using it, I would argue that the phone company's security was negligent if it could allow such things to occur. I would refuse to pay and threaten to sue them for damages, emotional distress, lost time due to litigating, etc.

If a phone company offers an unlimited plan, I think there should be mandatory caps for the lower priced plans at maybe 3-5 times the cost of the unlimited plan. That way the company could still make money on overages, but the customer wouldn't get massive bills like this.

Steve