This should just be let go. It would be different if someone downloaded something like a terabyte over and then wanted the bill cancelled, in that case they are obviously trying to game the system.
A stupidly large cost that can reasonably be put down to a mistake should always be removed on the first discretion, at which point the customer service representative should make sure the customer knows the rules and mark it down that they have been explained to. It's not like anyone would ever knowing pay such an outrageous rate for internet.
Even if this WASN'T a mistake, could any communications company seriously justify this cost?
It's like the old b.s. voice / data scam. Amazing how you can have unlimited data plans at $10, $20, $30 depending on your carrier and phone (which is a whole other scam) but unlimited voice was always expensive. Why are they even billed separately?
While were at it, text messages work out to be something like a million dollars a gigabyte of transfer (at least in Australia I don't know if the US is still so backwards).
Now you would think the marginal cost on each text message would be so small that they would just throw them in for free as a deal sweetener? Unless I don't know something about the costly way they are sent? I'm guessing it's just so much of a cash cow for carriers.
We're pretty much at the telecom's whim since this will likely never change without the FTC actually doing something. What's insane is that they had an unlimited data package that expired without any notice. Then Verizon went on with no problem charging them $1,000, $2,000, $3,000 all the way up to $18,000 without a simple blip on their radar. That was likely worth 5 minutes of a customer service rep's time while it was under $1,000 in calling, informing them, and taking off a substantial portion due to the confusion. Now they have lawyers, executives, and probably many others at different layers in the organization involved. On top of that this is bad publicity.
Many VoIP companies these days allow you to set a daily / monthly spending limit that will stop your calls in case you get hacked, for example. I'd really like to see that kind of service becoming a mainstream feature on mobile networks (would also help with stolen handsets to some extent).
setting a 'don't worry about it' limit in transfer, then charging a /whole lot/ per gigabyte above that is an established (though nearly universally hated) business model for ISPs.
The logic behind the model makes sense; 95% of your customers use so little bandwidth that it doesn't make sense to charge them differently. the cost of having them deal with a variable bill is greater than the cost of the bandwidth. The problem is that you need some way to restrain that 5% who eat enough bandwidth to hurt you.
Many ISPs (myself included) default to rate-limiting or disconnecting users when they go over the 'don't worry about it' quota, and then require users to take some additional action if they wish to pay more for more bandwidth. This is the solution that nearly all low end customers want.
The disadvantage (for the ISP) of rate limiting or disconnecting users when they go over rather than charging a lot is that users are more comfortable approaching the limit if they know the consequence is that their service will stop working until the next billing cycle than if the consequence is a truly massive bill.
Despite my copious use of credit cards[1], this is one reason I really like to use prepaid SIMs. Shame that there's only one semi-viable prepaid data option in the States; the rest of the world is generally better.
[1] Then again, I don't generally allow auto-rebill to my card.
A stupidly large cost that can reasonably be put down to a mistake should always be removed on the first discretion, at which point the customer service representative should make sure the customer knows the rules and mark it down that they have been explained to. It's not like anyone would ever knowing pay such an outrageous rate for internet.