In the expensive holiday gift department, it was not a diamond encrusted iPad but the gift of streaming videos. A Canadian family visiting the United States racked up a data bill of $11,336.62 for allowing the kids to view Netflix movies while abroad.
A laptop was being used as an entertainment console for John Gibson's two grandchildren from Weyburn Saskatchewan who were staying in Phoenix over the holidays causing major bill shock.
Using Netflix, the kids watched popular movies "Curious George," "Spider-Man" and "Shrek" from his Netflix account using his laptop stick mobile broadband account incurring international roaming charges
The international roaming fees at $6.00 per megabyte made each film cost around $400.00 to watch. SaskTel cut the bill down to $1000 which the family plans on paying.
"Old guys like me just aren't up to speed on technology and what these things are capable of doing ... without you even realizing it," Gibson said.
A less expensive option would have been to rent the movies at a local video rental kiosk or store. In general, most data plans are not unlimited and can cause expensive overage fees when roaming. Sometimes roaming may not seem obvious and can occur when you outside covered area.
This is not the first time that roaming charges caused an astronomical bills, it can happen while docked on a luxury liner.
MythBusters' Adam Savage was charger over $11,000 in data charges while visiting Canada, using his iPhone. Data bills have been as high as $28000 to watch a Bears game on a docked cruise ship and have generated lawsuits.
It is always a good idea to check with your carrier before you travel to see what roaming charges will be when you are other parts of the world.
The top holiday gift at Amazon.com has been the Amazon Kindle Fire. The Kindle Fire made traffic jump over the holidays. Our readers, however wished for the Asus Transformer Prime named one of the top tablets of 2011, that continues to sell-out.
AT&T recently changed its data plans and Verizon will be offering a double data deal soon. The new higher priced plans that have higher monthly rates but lower prices per gigabyte.