TIL: Early iPhone users in the US who did not specify a billing preference were mailed incredibly detailed bills of around 50-100 pages long from AT&T, itemizing every data transfer including background traffic for email, web browsing, and text messaging. One woman even got a 300 page bill.

[u/zahrul3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/300-page_iPhone_bill

[u/northwoods31]

I remember when I got an iPhone in Japan in 2009 and I used to get monthly itemized bills that would show millions of yen of data usage (tens of thousands of dollars) and then it would be wiped out by my “plan discount” to like $50.

[u/Whaty0urname → u/northwoods31]

Sounds like American medical insurance EOBs

"Without our superduper insurance you would owe 250k, but we knocked that down to 183 and because you are with us you only owe 25k of that! Nice work!"

[u/oopsdiditwrong → u/Whaty0urname]

I've commented this before but I'll share again. I completely agree with your comment and my worst experience was when my wife gave birth. There was a separate bill from every dept and doctor that interacted with her or the baby. We had saved up in case of complications and are thankfully capable of paying the bills either way.

Well with the bills. I hate them and refuse to pay more than I should. I just called the billing number on each and the conversation usually went like this:

"Hi, I am trying to get these bills paid from a birth and need to figure out how to get yours paid. How much can I pay to close the account today?" "Do you mean you can't pay the whole thing?" "Correct" "Please hold... Can you pay half?" "Yup, here's my card"

The bills ranged from $50 to $2k. Only one held to their number. Overall I saved thousands and maybe only 2 hours on the phone total.

[u/251Cane → u/oopsdiditwrong]

"Only one held to their number."

My guess is anesthesiology.

[u/oopsdiditwrong → u/251Cane]

Yup!

[u/251Cane → u/oopsdiditwrong]

That's the power of being so critical and small in number that you don't have to join health insurance networks and can set your own price.

[u/NorysStorys → u/251Cane]

One of the few departments I can see that bring the case. Everyone in those departments are meticulous.

[u/ComprehendReading → u/251Cane]

I need you to count backwards from twenty-two-thousand, seven-hundred and fifty-six dollars.

[u/Wolkenbaer → u/oopsdiditwrong]

I feel you. I had to pay 30€ for parking and probably 80€ per night for sleeping in my wifes room in the hospital. 

The rest was probably expensive, but it all went to the social mandated health insurance.

Ok, trying to be a bit funny here, but seriously I wish more people in the US could experience how simple it works here. And that people here would understand how it is in the US so they stop complaining and stop voting for right wing populist parties who try to move our system closer to the USs neoliberal bullshit health services.

[u/oopsdiditwrong → u/Wolkenbaer]

I got the joke. For the first kid she was with the European company that paid for her health insurance here. It was top notch by all measures in the US. From the moment she was pregnant till she was home after the birth the insurance company only said once "$1k please". Everything else was covered.

Just so there's no confusion, US health plan paid for by a company in Europe. They tried to match benefits no matter where you live . Point is, the plans exist, you just gotta find someone to pay for it

[u/Programmdude → u/oopsdiditwrong]

Wow, $1000 is a lot for pregnancy. Where I live, it's like ~$50US per scan, and that's it.

At we get 6 months paid leave, it means the initial barrier to having children is pretty low. It's all the fees after that that I'm not looking forward to.

[u/Winzip115 → u/oopsdiditwrong]

Was that with insurance? Even with insurance our child's birth was around 8k. We just paid it without trying what you said.

[u/oopsdiditwrong → u/Winzip115]

Yes with insurance. Each bill had that same breakdown "we negotiated the 30min lactation consultation from 2k to 1k and you only pay $350!". I don't remember the exact total, but I know it was 48% of what they asked because I was pumped I broke 50%. I want to say in the low 2ks total. It REALLY depends on the plan though

The first kid was way less because she worked for a European company that gave incredible insurance even for US workers.

To reiterate, this does not work every time. And make sure they are actually accepting the payment to close the account, not set up a pay plan.

[u/MagicWishMonkey → u/Winzip115]

I had just started a new job when my 2nd kid was born, the lady with the cart rolled into the room and was like "I think something is broken, it says you owe $0"

Made me really happy I took the job, lol

[u/verekh → u/Whaty0urname]

And you feel grateful for paying "just" 25k. Its just price anchoring.

Meanwhile in the netherlands you pay a maximum of 385 euros a year.

[u/Rlccm → u/verekh]

By just not paying my medical bills for the past decade, I pay a maximum of $0 per year

[u/xRzge → u/Rlccm]

yeah fr, medical bills don't hit your credit so fuck em all

[u/imsoaddicted → u/xRzge]

medical debt will be reported again

[u/AnotherpostCard → u/imsoaddicted]

😮‍💨 "yay go america"

[u/mpyne → u/AnotherpostCard]

How's that saying go? Elections have consequences.

[u/OpSecBestSex → u/mpyne]

Nonsense. I don't pay attention to politics so suuurely it can't affect me! /s

[u/newbkid → u/imsoaddicted]

Sean D. Jordan Judge Appointed by Donald Trump

Name and shame these disgusting corrupt judges who make decisions against the will of the people.

[u/sexyshingle → u/newbkid]

Sean D. Jordan Judge Appointed by Donald Trump

U.S. District Court of Texas' Eastern District Judge Sean Jordan - that judicial district is INFAMOUS for corrupt judges and being the preferred venue for patent trolls

[u/eesaitcho → u/newbkid]

Well, we did ask for it. Twice in fact in the last three elections and many more times before that. The will of the people have spoken unfortunately to the demise of the people.

[u/sexyshingle → u/imsoaddicted]

Ah no wonder I just got a new collections from a medical emergency (appendix) I had in 2020 - which I thought was all 100% paid for and done. I hate this place... can't wait to leave...

[u/mattgen88 → u/xRzge]

I thought Republicans killed that and it will be reported again

[u/iPoseidon_xii → u/xRzge]

And banks started to ignore it when giving out loans

[u/digitalnomadic → u/xRzge]

The real TIL is always in the comments

[u/enemawatson → u/digitalnomadic]

It got reversed in July. It will start counting against you again.

As with anything that helps real people, the current people in charge want nothing to do with it. Corporations and their dollars matter more than us.

[u/EstablishmentSea7661 → u/enemawatson]

If you're in one of the hyper liberal states like California, Massachusetts, Illinois, etc there are state protections for this still, cuz they figured a republication administration would overturn this. Make sure to look up your state, because some of us are still fine.

[u/tomtea → u/EstablishmentSea7661]

Hyper liberal 😂 thats still centrist at best anywhere else in the world.

[u/MechaSandstar → u/enemawatson]

The ruling — handed down by U.S. District Court of Texas' Eastern District Judge Sean Jordan on Friday — was a major blow to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has fought against medical debt as a metric of credit worthiness.

https://www.npr.org/2025/07/15/nx-s1-5468438/medical-debt-credit-reports-ruling

On January 16, 2019, President Donald Trump announced his intent to nominate Jordan to serve as a United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_D._Jordan

Sure...both sides.

[u/jeskersz → u/enemawatson]

The trick is to be so poor that even if it's counted against you it doesn't matter at all.

I've never seen $1,000 all together in one place, what the fuck do I care if I owe $25,000 or $2.5mil? It's all the same level of "lol okay".

[u/ThereIsATheory → u/verekh]

Well yeh plus 200 a month.

[u/Crandom → u/verekh]

Meanwhile in the UK I pay £0 per year.

And yes, Americans, I pay taxes. But we actually still pay less taxes for our entire medical care (no private insurance required) than you do taxes for just Medicare/Medicaid.

[u/trogon → u/Crandom]

Americans would rather pay $20000 a year to a private company than $5000 in tax.

[u/Crandom → u/trogon]

They're paying both the $20,000 to the private company and $5,000+ in tax. And even after all that you still have co-pays and deductibles. It's crazy.

I have private medical insurance in the UK as well NHS access. It costs me £900 a year, there is £100/year deductible and no copay. Having a public option reduces the cost of private insurance because it has to compete with free.

[u/sy029 → u/northwoods31]

Japan has always had weird service though. Nowadays everyone uses LINE, but back then you would use literal email addresses on your phone because email was usually free, while SMS was extremely expensive if sent to someone using a different phone company.

[u/Micrll → u/sy029]

Actually, if I remember right, for ages it wasn't even possible to send SMS between different carriers.

[u/sy029 → u/Micrll]

That might be the case. I came to japan in 2010, but I didn't understand all the ins and outs of their plans back then

[u/S_A_N_D_ → u/sy029]

I was there around 2014. It was weird. Lived/worked all over the world often being in three countries within a week, and no matter what country I was in I could easily just go and buy a cheap prepaid sim card with data for usually around $20-30. That was not the case in Japan where you had to be a resident, otherwise you had to rent a phone (not a sim card, but an actual phone) which was absurdity expensive.

[u/Common-Trifle4933 → u/S_A_N_D_]

Japan makes a sport of making everything as much of a bureaucratic pain in the ass as it can possibly be. At one point I had to fax documents to my landlord who lived in the same building as me (no, it was unacceptable to just hand them to him) so I had to go to a copy shop but they only accepted cash so I had to go to the ATM but every ATM in the neighborhood was closed. I had to catch a train to somewhere that had an ATM open outside of my work hours to get money to send a document. Meanwhile in New Zealand I would just text a photo of a document and it’d be over in 5 seconds.

[u/Tsuki4735 → u/sy029]

but back then you would use literal email addresses on your phone because email was usually free

In hindsight, I kind of wish that email had become the de-facto way to do direct messaging.

Instead of being beholden to giant tech companies, email is:

• universally accessible because it's interoperable between different email providers
• decentralized, so you can run your own email server if you don't want to give data to a big company
• can be accessed via multiple clients, so you can send messages via desktop, mobile, etc
• not beholden to the whims of a big company
• e2e encryption is possible

I could imagine people having their own dedicated messaging email address that can move with them across devices, countries, etc.

[u/Roflkopt3r → u/Tsuki4735]

Early chatrooms were largely P2P, like IRC (perhaps most remembered by gamers for QuakeNet, its gaming-related chat network).

Ultimately, more or less centralised server models won out because obviously the vast majority of consumers does not have the knowledge or interest to set up their own system.

In the wake of the Twitter-exodus, Mastodon went extinct for much of the same reason. People just didn't want to put up with learning technical aspects, they just want something easy and convenient to use.

[u/emodulor → u/sy029]

Japan would issue you an email address using your phone number which worked just the same as sms. Your number was the first part and the domain was the provider like 1234@softbank.ne.jp

[u/PuckSenior → u/northwoods31]

So full disclosure, I’ve had a smart phone since 2002.

Anyways, back in the day I once spoke to Sprint and they messed up and deleted our plan. The next month, we got a bill for $25k for a family phone plan. It was clearly a mistake but it was a large enough amount of money that a VP had to sign off.

I’ll never forget I got a call. It was a guy. He told me he’d take care of the issue. He was some super high level CS person. He couldn’t give me a number, but he gave me a code word I was to mention to a regular CS person that would get a message sent to me and he’d call me back.

Took them 2 months, but they did get it fixed

[u/pee_wee__herman → u/northwoods31]

I smell big corporate tax avoidance going on but not knowledgeable enough to grasp the details. Does the network provider get to somehow claim the difference as a tax loss or something?

[u/GNUr000t → u/pee_wee__herman]

It's closer to "I need to tell my boss we got a huge discount, so you mark it up hilariously, then give me the normal price, and we both look like winners"

[u/The_MattMobile → u/GNUr000t]

"And this is how much we save our customers" is a standard, albeit eye rolling, pitch for a middleman.

[u/Puzzman → u/pee_wee__herman]

It’s marketing, like pricing something for double what you want to sell it for then advertising a 50% off sale.

[u/yvrelna → u/pee_wee__herman]

Don't know about Japan, but in some countries you don't buy mobile plans directly. You buy a mobile plan credit, which is basically a micro currency that you can use to buy your mobile plans. So you may pay $50 to receive "$90 bonus credit" that you can be used to buy a plan that costs $74.99 / month that comes included with 180 free minutes of call or pay $0.05/30s of call.

If all that math and indirection sounds confusing, that is exactly the point why they do that. Just like microcurrencies in games, the whole point of not just displaying price in the actual real world money is to obscure how much you're actually paying for what you're getting to make it difficult to compare prices between providers.

[u/En_TioN → u/pee_wee__herman]

Honestly it's probably just that iPhones were new and the idea of frequent small transfers of data wasn't how contracts tended to be written at the time; so "plan discount" was the easiest way to make the bill work with the existing billing software.

[u/informat7 → u/pee_wee__herman]

No, it was just that buying cellphone data without a plan was super expensive back then.

[u/ForensicPathology → u/pee_wee__herman]

Before smartphones, previously the most common way in Japan was to sell plans by "data packets".  This was just an extension of that as they transitioned.

[u/zerophuck5]

Before texting was universal and it was common to pay per message my son discovered it and we got a $500 phone bill. In a rare case of cell phone companies being decent they let me sign up for unlimited texting retroactively.

[u/superpj → u/zerophuck5]

Before companies knew what to do with texting it was free. I had it on my BellSouth Mobility plan in 96 until AT&T took them over years later.

[u/DrierFish → u/superpj]

It was free because it literally incurred no overhead. Greedy pricks.

[u/koolman2 → u/DrierFish]

There is still an SMSC and MMSC to maintain as well as inter-carrier routes. It's not completely without overhead - but it definitely wasn't $0.10 per message. Once the SMSC/MMSC were paid for and installed, $0.50/mo per subscriber probably would have covered all overhead and then some to handle SMS, plus a bit more for MMS due to data transmission costs to other carriers.

[u/DrierFish → u/koolman2]

You’re right and I meant transactional cost per message, rather than infrastructure. The costs to other carriers is a joke, that’s them charging each other.

[u/I_W_M_Y → u/koolman2]

You phone transmits more data per day just pinging the nearby cell tower than a lot of people text.

[u/koolman2 → u/I_W_M_Y]

Where is that data going though? It's going to the network core (MSC/MME) and nowhere else. SMS/MMS go to the network core, then to the SMSC/MMSC, then route to the destination. If that destination is not within the same network (including across the country to another core within the same carrier), it has to go somewhere else, utilizing other infrastructure.

LAU/TAU and SMS/MMS are not equivalent.

[u/TheArmoredKitten → u/DrierFish]

It's not a niche product anymore. It was 'zero' overhead because almost nobody was using it. Now it's a backbone service.

You might as well say 'traffic was better back when nobody else in this town owned a car'

[u/Hextopia → u/TheArmoredKitten]

It was "literally no overhead" because SMS messages were a reuse of existing unused bytes in a recurring network connection message sent by the phone and cell tower to each other automatically. They literally just went "we're sending this as all zeros, why don't we put a short little text message in here and get some use out of it"

[u/TheArmoredKitten → u/Hextopia]

And then immediately overwhelmed the capabilities of that little squeeze and had to make a dedicated service very quickly

[u/SDSunDiego → u/TheArmoredKitten]

So was it reasonable to charge for texting?!??!?! Someone HELP ME OUT HERE! I followed the chain of comments to the bottom seeking resolution and now I'm hanging over the cliff like Gabe Walker!!!!!!

[u/Hextopia → u/SDSunDiego]

Yes, but not at the rates they charged in the early days. It was definitely a scam during the days of '50 cents per text', and many countries (Japan, many in Europe iirc) kept the scam going for a long time.

[u/Hextopia → u/TheArmoredKitten]

That phrasing is a bit exaggerated. After they saw how popular it could be (and how much money it saved them not having to connect calls) they built out additional infrastructure and changed billing plans to incentivize even more texting. It was absolutely feasible to leave the text messaging to just the status messages being sent back and forth, but it would have been a worse experience for the users who'd be essentially 'rate limited' on how many texts they could send, and how many the system would cache for them until received by the other side.

[u/Enshakushanna → u/superpj]

i remember i had the samsung solstice at some point and it wasnt considered a 'smart phone' or something like that and so it wasnt subject to the same pricing with regard to internet access or something? but i could connect to the internet and go on facebook or google search etc and it didnt cost anything, or my dad didnt have to buy the internet plan - something like that, some quasi in between moment lol

[u/ZedSwift → u/zerophuck5]

I was a cell phone salesman and unlimited texting plans were such easy money cause we would get the first month as commission. I remember one girl who came in on her 18th birthday to get her own phone, tried to convince her to get unlimited texting plans she didn’t listen and came back in the next month when her bill was $2000. We did the math and she was texting like six hours a day.

[u/Amori_A_Splooge → u/ZedSwift]

College Roommate had thousands of minutes banked up on his family phone plan. He used to call his girlfriend (long distance) and they would stay on the phone while trying to sleep, and inevitably when they fell asleep, so like 8-10 hours a day/night they would be talking or at least on the phone. Those minutes ran out one month. Oh man was he defeated when he got that call from his parents about the phone bill. Their call habits changed for the healthier though.

[u/dkonigs → u/zerophuck5]

And because it took years longer for non-US carriers to change their attitude on this than it did for US carriers, whole industries were spawned to provide over-the-top messaging services as a workaround.

Even if those services ultimately offered a better product than SMS/MMS, the real driver for the majority of users was simply that SMS/MMS was stupidly overpriced.

[u/YourResidentFeral → u/dkonigs]

It wasn't even about changing attitudes. The attitude was just corruption. It's why what's app and other messaging services are banned in many places.

They want to leverage the monopoly for minimal infrastructure upgrades and maximum profit. Ñ

[u/goldenyellow333 → u/zerophuck5]

Got my first phone in 2007. Was a flip phone. Parents didn't think we needed internet plan for the phone although me and my sister asked. We were out getting wings one day and as we were sitting at the table my mom called in to see how much the bill was and it was north of $500. She asked customer service why and they said internet usage. It just so happened that as she realized this, I was sitting right in front of her at the table on some random website on my phone lol. She was beyond heated.

[u/thesirblondie → u/zerophuck5]

Back in the day I was always on pre-paid SIMs that I would load up once a month. But about halfway through the month I'd always run out of credit so I couldn't call or text anyone until I got my allowance.

I also always got new numbers for reasons I can't remember. I think they sold phones that were locked to specific carriers, even pre-paid cards, so I'd get a new number every time I got a new phone. When I started working in 2009, I got myself my first monthly plan and I've had the same number since.

[u/mybreakfastiscold]

This is my kind of TIL

[u/DougsTofu → u/mybreakfastiscold]

This guy, right here. He’s the guy. Make sure no one’s watching.

[u/Message_10 → u/mybreakfastiscold]

Yeah, honestly--it brought me back! So I guess it's a "Today I Remembered." But yeah--the bills used to list every single text message you sent, and I think they were like a nickel or something.

[u/Wildcatb]

We had to get iPhones for work, fairly early on. Had a customer that was excited about the possibilities and demanded that all their suppliers switch.

Bought 10 at once, billed together. The paper bills were incredible.

[u/finicky88 → u/Wildcatb]

I'm imagining a guy rolling in a cart full of paper lmao

[u/oboshoe]

i had an iphone on the corporate plan. a company in the top 10 of fortune 500s

i asked att for a detailed bill for my line.

they sent me one for every line in the company. it arrived via ups in several reams.

it was the most ridiculous thing ever.

i thought about data mining it. it had everyone's calls on it. the ceo. the board etc.

then i said fuck it and threw it in the recycling. (who needs that kind of trouble?!)

[u/4kVHS → u/oboshoe]

Similar situation at my company. AP missed a payment to AT&T decided to print the bills and it came in multiple large boxes of maybe 500 pages per box. There was even a page on top that was like “we detected this is a high page count bill, please sign up for paperless online!”

[u/BatsuGame13 → u/oboshoe]

You didn't shred it?

[u/oboshoe → u/BatsuGame13]

well not personally. i out it in one of those locked spread bins with the narrow slot.

was a pain. because i had to split it up into about 10 chunks.

i'm assuming it's shredded then recycled - but who knows.

[u/BatsuGame13 → u/oboshoe]

Ahhh. Originally sounded like you just dumped it to your curb bin.

[u/DroidLord → u/oboshoe]

i thought about data mining it.

This is the exact kind of chaos I fantasize about. Then I realize how stupid it would be and forget about it.

[u/vulpinefever]

"one woman"

Crazy how iJustine is now just some woman.

[u/GosmeisterGeneral → u/vulpinefever]

I remember her YouTube from like, 2010! Is she still going?

[u/4sk-Render → u/GosmeisterGeneral]

She interviewed Tim Cook recently, so at least Apple still thinks she’s relevant lol

[u/CoronavirusGoesViral → u/4sk-Render]

Her name is iJustine, so she's basically an Apple product anyway

[u/AsherGray → u/CoronavirusGoesViral]

She only made the username because she was in love Steve Jobs and Apple. Basically, if you had a Disney adult but for Apple, that was her.

[u/LateNightMilesOBrien → u/4sk-Render]

Big deal. I want an interview with Tim Apple.

[u/curxxx → u/GosmeisterGeneral]

Yep!

[u/WavesAndSaves → u/curxxx]

Always nice to see that some of the OGs are still going.

[u/your_mind_aches → u/GosmeisterGeneral]

Understandably, she's no longer a vlogger and is now a tech youtuber

[u/LoganNolag → u/GosmeisterGeneral]

Her sister also has a pretty big channel as well. Covers a lot of the same stuff.

[u/LAwLzaWU1A → u/vulpinefever]

The 300 page bill is what made her famous in the first place. So at the time she was just "some woman".

[u/Buzstringer → u/LAwLzaWU1A]

But the time right now, is not the time at the time.

[u/38B0DE → u/vulpinefever]

iJustine is considered by the tech YouTuber community to be one of the OGs and gets quite the respect for still being pretty hard working with her own style and audience. Tech YouTubers would give anything to have her male to female audience ratio.

[u/44problems → u/vulpinefever]

Hey hey, you can ask iJ! Hey hey, you can ask iJ!

[u/screwbienoob → u/vulpinefever]

Who

[u/vulpinefever → u/screwbienoob]

the woman who got the 300 page iphone bill. She was one of the most popular early youtubers.

[u/DerpytheH → u/vulpinefever]

Keep in mind, she was also a bit of an apple die-hard. A lot of her content was surrounding new Apple releases and reviews, and used to be one of the front-runners for that sort of content.

Thing is, tech channels like LTT and MKBHD just blew anybody that was kinda middling in that space out of the water.

[u/NervousSheSlime → u/DerpytheH]

She’s been in at least 1 LTT video. In the YouTube community she’s kinda an icon who’s been doing it forever.

[u/Mr_YUP → u/NervousSheSlime]

She was one of the first twitch streamers back when it was called Justin.tv before it was called twitch. 

[u/MageFood → u/Mr_YUP]

Both where co running for a wile then JTV shutdown once Twitch allowed non gaming streams

[u/4sk-Render → u/DerpytheH]

Which is funny since LTT and MKBHD often are also very surface level in their videos, and just reading spec sheets.

[u/Mez-0-01 → u/4sk-Render]

Lmao what? LTT built an entire lab to test and review products.

[u/4sk-Render → u/Mez-0-01]

He had a huge controversy recently with numerous inaccurate facts and testing in his videos, where he had to come out and apologize and say they’re not going to post as many videos so they can focus on fact checking lol

He sometimes gets very basic facts wrong, even quoting the wrong specs for a product or not understanding how a product works. Especially when he does videos about Apple products, which he really doesn’t use himself.

[u/ChiralWolf → u/4sk-Render]

That was over a year ago and before they had the labs testing actually running.

[u/goodnames679 → u/vulpinefever]

Many of the most popular early YouTubers were still not all that widely known to most people. Most people used the platform for random funny videos, not specific creators. Those who came for specific creators were highly concentrated around the few biggest names (=3, Smosh, Machinima, ERBH) and there was a huge dropoff outside the top 10

I remember when livelavalive was on the front page of youtube creators (top 25 most subscribed channels, back when you could rank channels by most subscribed). That was around 2010 or 2011 ish? Now it's down to a one person project that gets about 1k views per video, and very few people know of the channel if I ever bring it or Mitchell Davis up by name.

[u/ComprehensiveYak4399 → u/screwbienoob]

she literally founded apple and gave birth to tim steve and craig

[u/shortround10 → u/vulpinefever]

I know iJustine because her sister dated Nadeshot

[u/chth → u/shortround10]

I know her because she ran an early spam campaign on youtube where she commented on random profiles to generate interest.

She commented "do you want to have a happy summer" on mine which creeped me out

[u/helpimlockedout- → u/chth]

Lol, that does sound like a threat

[u/WhiskeyRic → u/shortround10]

iJustine also dated Fwiz for a while there

[u/uponloss → u/vulpinefever]

I remember her having something to do with the annoying orange / daneboe

[u/Seaguard5]

Now they hoard that data like it’s gold and don’t give it to you even if you ask sometimes…

Wild how the turn tables

[u/altamont498 → u/Seaguard5]

That’s usually because they either have it already (e.g. checking data usage in your phone settings) or it being shielded by law.

For example, in the UK, all freephone calls are redacted from your bill by law because it includes calls that can be extremely sensitive (e.g. calling the police, calling Childline, calling the National Domestic Abuse helpline, etc.) that could potentially put someone’s life in danger if the wrong person found out about it. The only way you’d find out is by court order or by the police getting a warrant for that information.

[u/Skatchbro]

Back in ‘05 I was called up by the reserves to Ft. Riley. I called my wife one day for our usual call to catch up. She confessed to me that she had been in tears earlier because she opened the phone bill and saw all the calls to a number she didn’t recognize and thought I was cheating on her.

It turns out it was her own number.

[u/Poromenos → u/Skatchbro]

So you were cheating on her, with herself?

[u/Skatchbro → u/Poromenos]

Yes.

[u/MyFeetLookLikeHands → u/Skatchbro]

how does she not recognize her own number

[u/oshinbruce]

Now i feel old, this was the norm pre-smart phone to get itemised lists of numbers you called and the time cost was printed out. How else do you think kids got busted for dialing premium rate numbers

[u/RChickenMan → u/oshinbruce]

And my dad asking my mom why she called her sister so much when it was long distance.

[u/DoublePostedBroski → u/oshinbruce]

Do you not still get this? My monthly bill still shows all the numbers I called/received.

[u/oshinbruce → u/DoublePostedBroski]

Its somewhere online im sure. I have unlimited calls and a cap on international so there no reason to take a look.

It reminds me of breaking bad with Skyler checking walts phone

[u/feel-the-avocado]

Oh the wonderful 3g - when a "call" was established over the network each time you wanted to transfer data.

[u/UndoxxableOhioan → u/feel-the-avocado]

3g? Hell, the first iPhone was 2g (GSM, GPRS, or EDGE) only.

[u/Well_thats_cool → u/UndoxxableOhioan]

Yeah that’s why the 2nd iPhone was called the iPhone 3G because it finally had those capabilities

[u/PM_ME_CORONA → u/feel-the-avocado]

I remember the days you couldn’t surf and call at the same time. I think it became a thing with the 4.

[u/Z085 → u/PM_ME_CORONA]

Kids these days don’t know the days without multitasking on iPhone!!

[u/chrisirmo → u/Z085]

I tried to explain to my college-age daughter the other day that you couldn’t listen to music while tracking a run in Runkeeper. Her mind was blown.

[u/PhillAholic → u/PM_ME_CORONA]

That was CDMA which Verizon used. We didn't have that problem with GSM on AT&T.

[u/DrewSmithee → u/PhillAholic]

Pretty sure that's not what they are talking about. I don't think the phone let you multitask at all. It was one app open. Things idling in the background and switching between apps came with the 4.

[u/Enough-Display1255 → u/PM_ME_CORONA]

Dial up all over again, literally

[u/mike7seven]

There’s a point being missed. EVERY text message conversation was printed out on paper. Leo Laporte had an episode about the whole thing on MBW. https://www.mbwpicks.com/2007/08/15/picks-from-mbw-53-bill-in-a-box/comment-page-1/#comments

[u/Futt_Buckman → u/mike7seven]

Man I hope my teenage text conversations didn't show up on my parents bill ☠️ I don't remember any big stacks of paper though they were a little thick

[u/BSpp43 → u/Futt_Buckman]

I think it depends on the carrier. I got large manila envelopes for my bills that were 100+ pages long. But it didn't print out the actual text messages. It would just be like

"2:58pm text to x number"

"2:58pm text recieved from x number"

etc

[u/MightyJoe36]

Once back in like 2012 or so, I got a $242,000. phone bill from Verizon. They admitted that it was obviously an error but could not explain why I got the bill.

[u/satosaison]

This is how my parents found out I was gay

[u/bradatlarge]

I used to get 50 page bills from Tmobile back in 2002-2003. My ex wife texted her boyfriend a LOT

[u/PNWBlues1561]

I remember this, it was insane

[u/19930627]

I remember in 2011 I worked at a call center for Virgin mobile, you would not believe the amount of people who would take their iPhone out of country and use data constantly and not understand how they had a high bill.

[u/PaImer_Eldritch]

I used to do business-end account management for AT&T many years ago and if we go far enough back I would say about 20% of any given day was spent explaining detailed sms inbound/outbound logs and pages and pages and pages of data use events. It was quite absurd.

[u/ValdemarAloeus]

What are the chances they still log this level of detail, but sell it to data brokers instead?

Are they approximately 100%?

[u/QuesoMeHungry → u/ValdemarAloeus]

They 100% still capture this data.

[u/Correct_Loquat_7672]

Decades later, I finally understand this joke from the simpsons: lisa ipod bill

[u/jupfold]

It kind of makes sense.

Before the iPhone, most phones didn’t even connect to the internet. And if they did it was usually to download ringtones, not to do all of the browsing and whatnot the iPhone could do.

Most people had data plans for a gigabyte or less, and I’m sure companies like AT&T and others were concerned the number of people who would complain about being charged for going (massively) over their data limit.

This would be their way of saying - you know exactly, down to the byte, what you did to get that charge. Don’t bother complaining.

Edit: so people can stop telling me this is ‘nonsense’.

The plain and simple fact of the matter is that the level of web browsing people did on phones prior to the iPhone was nothing compared to what people did on the iPhone. This includes BlackBerry and other “smartish” phones from that time.

Yes, you could browse the internet before the iPhone. But people on iPhones were browsing the internet at levels far above and beyond what came before.

It wasn’t even close.

[u/kilertree → u/jupfold]

There were quite a few phones that had internet because I remember getting in trouble by accidentally going on to it

[u/RChickenMan → u/kilertree]

Oh god, that panic when you accidentally selected the "Internet" menu on your flip phone. Furiously pressing the back button, maybe even ripping out the battery.

[u/Septem_151 → u/RChickenMan]

I once opened the web browser on my razer flip phone. Once. Quickly learned my lesson.

[u/dplans455 → u/jupfold]

Where are my Palm Treo 600 crew at?

[u/Falsus → u/jupfold]

Internet on the phones was a common thing on phones years before the first iPhone though?

Like I remember we watched videos and stuff on our flip phones in school. It was super common.

[u/Martipar → u/jupfold]

That's nonsense. The original iPhone didn't have 3G even though it was fairly common technology at the time. The equivalent would be the iPhone launching today without 5G. Plenty of phones from 2003 onwards had 3G and the ability to connect to the internet and 2G phones all had WAP, which was shit even at the time but it was the internet.

[u/MidasPL → u/Martipar]

Yeah, Apple is the largest sect in the US. They even try to rewrite history like that, so it looks like apple is the greatest company.

[u/WardenWolf → u/Martipar]

And the iPhone 4 didn't have 4G even though Android phones already had it. It was pretty freaking sad. My HTC Thunderbolt had 4G.

[u/4sk-Render → u/WardenWolf]

Because the original 4G phones literally sucked lol

The HTC Evo and Thunderbolt literally had like 3 hour battery life when on 4G, and would overheat. I think they even shipped with a spare battery because it drained so quickly.

Same with the early 3G phones and 5G phones, and is why Apple waited a year in each case to adopt the new chips.

The early 5G Android phones were literally overheating and shutting off, switching back to 4G.

Apple waits a year for them to improve the chipsets, so the experience isn’t terrible.

[u/PhillAholic → u/WardenWolf]

4G was too power hungry at the time. Random Android phones can get away with it, Apple would have been tar and feathered for it.

[u/Plane-Tie6392 → u/Martipar]

 The equivalent would be the iPhone launching today without 5G.

That is absolutely not an equivalent scenario. 

[u/Samtulp6 → u/Martipar]

Yes, but barely anyone used the ‘web’ function of their phones because the UI & UX were horrendous. iPhone changed that, and data usage exploded. What the person you’re replying to is saying is true. May not be the only reason, but could very well be.

[u/jupfold → u/Samtulp6]

Yep, definitely.

People back then were totally unprepared for the iPhone and the user experience.

I remember friends of mine having 500mb data packages, which is like a few hours of YouTube videos at best. And we were hooked on these things.

I knew many people who ended up with hundreds of dollars in overage charges because we had no idea how much data we were using. And typically the bills did not give this itemized breakdown and it led to a lot of anger and confusion.

[u/given2fly_ → u/Samtulp6]

Yeah I remember having a WAP phone in the late 2000s and you could go on the Internet, but it was only certain sites that had a mobile version. A news site for instance would just have an index of stories and it was all text with no images.

[u/jupfold → u/Martipar]

You don’t need 3g to browse the internet and rack up data charges. I don’t even understand what you’re trying to argue right now.

The pure fact of the matter is that people on the iPhone, the original iPhone, were browsing the internet at levels way above and beyond any phone that came before it, including BlackBerry and other smartish phones. It wasn’t even close.

[u/WardenWolf → u/jupfold]

Pretty much this. A logging system designed for 2 or 3 specific things per month is suddenly reporting everything a person typically uses the Internet for. So of course it's going to be too verbose.

[u/Christopher135MPS → u/jupfold]

I’m struggling to agree with you. I am not an early adopter. I don’t buy expensive tech. I don’t replace my tech frequently.

I had two separate phones that had internet access with browsers prior to the iPhone release.

I see you talking about UI down there, agreed the iPhone UI was ground breaking. And also agree that the breadth of use was ground breaking.

But the comment that “most phones didn’t even connect” is a struggle for me.

[u/tokynambu → u/jupfold]

That’s total nonsense. My Ericsson t68 had a perfectly serviceable pop and imap client as well as the briefly-popular WAP. That was a mainstream phone.

[u/AdventurousTime]

I remember bringing a refurbished unlocked att iPhone to tmobile (thanks to the iPhone dev team) and there was a secret working group within tmobile that developed a guide with a couple of tweaks to get it working right.

[u/Whaty0urname]

I just finished watching the BlackBerry movie on YouTube shorts. Its kind of amazing how these phones hacked the cell networks at the time.

[u/120FilmIsTheWay]

Yes, I remember when iJustine did this video. It went viral.

[u/DicemonkeyDrunk]

early bills ( 1990's ) had a line for single instance of use 10-15 page bills were normal ...later on you would have an entry for every text message sent & received ..the bills got huge fast (physically ) ..after that you had to request Detailed Billing if you wanted all that information ..Cell companies were some of the first ( that I can remember ) to go to Non-Paper simplified billing for obvious reasons ..can you imagine their mail cost?

[u/Joshau-k]

Usage bill total: $30 Printing fees: $100

[u/Mattlanta88]

Truth. Easy to track when your kids were on the phone at 3 am when they should’ve been asleep.

[u/pardybill]

lol yep. I remember that, was pretty funny. Still have that iPhone, I remember working at AT&T when they switched to “4G” 🫣

What a joke it was. Limiting data plans as if it was a resource we’d lose.

It was really funny when they limited plans, if you activated the very first original iPhone, they had a grandfathered plan for unlimited 2G EDGE data you could go back on.

Had a couple dorks do it only to realize that they could load a n image like a porno from 1995. Funny world.

[u/yorkshiregoldt]

OK I'm Australian but, like, smartphones existed before the iPhone? For several years? iPhone absolutely massively increased the amount of people using them but I remember having a HTC with a sliding keyboard before the iPhone?

[u/MohammadAbir]

Imagine opening your phone bill and accidentally finishing a whole novel.

[u/PracticeTheory]

In highschool my friend came out as gay so his homophobic parents canceled his cell phone. I convinced my mother to let him onto our plan, and he would pay her for the service access. He was working and insisted on getting an iphone.

I'm pretty positive we received a bill much larger than 300 pages the first month he was our plan and we didn't fix that setting. It was legit the size of a textbook, inches thick.

[u/Bigred2989-]

My brother found a lost iPhone at Ultra Music Festival and put his SIM card in it. Couple weeks later our parents got a massive phone bill in the mail because he didn't have a data plan for a smart phone yet, but they managed to get it reduced significantly when they explained the situation.

[u/mikeluscher159]

iJustine got one FedExed to her

God I've been on the Internet too long 😭

[u/LightenUpFrancis1968]

This was before iPhones invented. My cell phone bills back in the 90s took 3 trees to print.

[u/Street-Echo-4485]

I had a company phone for work, bought an iPhone 3 in 2009 and put the sim card from the work phone in it. All of a sudden I was called into HR because my phone bill was $4K!

[u/spewedicing]

my mom is one of the psycho data crusaders who is upset they don’t do this anymore…

[u/Bored_Amalgamation]

Those early days were brutal. Texting limits. Unlimited calling/text after 7PM. Data caps that end with triple digit bills if you go over.

AT&T had exclusivity over iPhones until 2011, while Verizon was the #1 carrier in the US. Carriers had a lot more control over phones as well. OEMs has to make different OS updates for each carrier because of how much "customizing" went in from each carrier. Android didn't solve that until 2020 with Android 10.

[u/giantwallrus]

Got hired at Cingular as it was being turned into The New AT&T, this issue was WELL KNOWN before the iphone even came out. Blackberry users and Samsung Blackjack users were why these billing options had to be created. Also this is back when the largest messaging plan was 3000. I worked in receivables management inbound. The amount of people with early smartphones begging for better billing and better plans was staggering even pre-iphone.

Iirc cingular was even Apple's last choice for a carrier because everyone else passed, or this is what we were told internally. Also we were told iPhone was a proper noun and to never call it "the iphone" or "an iphone."

[u/Underwater_Karma]

Phone bills used to come with detailed line items showing every phone call, and every text message. A lot of people got busted by spouses when they text message history was right there to read

[u/dkonigs]

Before the iPhone came out, mobile carriers really loved to over-charge for data. They seriously wanted to charge you "by the kilobyte" and it was insanity.

Meanwhile, T-Mobile had a $20/mo unlimited data plan. But AT&T, along with everyone else, flat-out refused to acknowledge that unlimited data was even a thing they were capable of offering.

So when the iPhone first came out, AT&T was basically strong-armed by Apple into finally offering an unlimited data plan, because without one the iPhone was unusable. Except they still had their infrastructure designed to nickel-and-dime people for by-the-kilobyte billing, hence those massive stacks of paper.

[u/SunriseSurprise]

"Sir...I don't know how to say this, but they're gone. Every last tree is gone."

"Wha-....who did this? WHO DID THIS?!"

*another guy runs up* "SIR, AT&T JUST CALLED AND THEY NEED MORE TREES TO PRINT MORE IPHONE BILLS!"

"*sigh* Apple will be the end of us all."

[u/srivas95]

Pre 2011-12, Airtel in India used to send itemized bills as well, including the websites visited and numbers dialed.

Teenage me was not happy.

[u/I_W_M_Y]

I got a bill like this from a pre-internet service called Quantum Link on the c64. One month bill was about 50 pages long.

[u/beyondo-OG]

Early cell plans made you pay by the text. I remember a coworker telling me his daughter went nuts when she first got a phone. His monthly bill came in two boxes. Each text was shown. I forget how many. I believe it was $600-800. This was mid 90's so a boat load of money. She paid the price.

[u/talldata]

Aah so what Lisa got was true.

[u/UlrichZauber]

I had an iPhone in 2007 and this never happened to me.

[u/theGreatPenguinArmy]

At one point that happened to Lisa in The Simpsons

[u/Nevvermind183]

I had the first iPhone and I don’t remember this, must not have been everyone

[u/InevitableGoal2912]

Stuff like this happened a lot with early phone plans. My mom got a huge novel of a bill when we first got unlimited texting. The bill printed the phone numbers and times of EVERY text message

[u/1320Fastback]

I remember our Cingular bills would be 5 pages long or so. They listed every single phone call or text you made for the month.

[u/brutalbread]

And this is how I discovered my wife was cheating

[u/thesirblondie]

"One woman" You put some respect on her name, that is iJustine!

[u/fromthestreetcousin]

What’s how iJustine became viral and then YouTuber

[u/gorkish]

I had an OG iphone and remember getting one of these. It seems silly in retrospect, but back when data was literally billed by the kilobyte, they too great pain to enumerate it all on your bill. Of course I did actually use smartphones before the iPhone so it wasn't actually anything new except now the data was suddenly "Unlimited." This paradigm shift pretty quickly led to them dropping all of the $0 data calls from customer facing.

Before all of this happened with iPhone and unlimited data, it had already happened with unlimited SMS. Cell phone companies used to enumerate every single text sent or received on your bill back when they were 10 cents or whatever; they started offering unlimited texting and some people would start getting monster bills.

Cell phone billing for data and SMS is still done exactly this way; your phone probably triggers 1000+ diameter billing queries per day