The Haggler: A Cellphone Theft, and a $25,000 Phone Bill

During a recent visit to the Omni Shoreham in Washington, the Haggler was awakened by the blast of a neighbor leaving his room at 6 a.m. And the racket never ceased, because at hotels — surprise! — people enter and exit rooms throughout the day and night.

A bit of research shows that hotel doors slam shut in part because they’re cheap to install and in part because of liability concerns. Owners worry that the doors won’t fully close, which could lead to thefts and other crimes, which could lead to lawsuits.

But, obviously, a mechanism exists that closes a door fully and quietly. The Haggler encountered it this summer at the Hyatt Regency in Albuquerque. The question is why these mechanisms aren’t far more common.

Remember when lousy mattresses were the norm in hotels? Then, in the late 1990’s, some hotels started upgrading their mattresses and boasting about them, as a way to stand apart from the competition. (Westin Hotels and Resorts was a pioneer, with its “Heavenly Bed.”) A few years later, good mattresses were the norm.

You know what we need now? A door war. The Haggler wants to see hotels swap out their wretched clangers for quiet doors, and pronto. By all means, give them goofy, trademarked names, like the “Dream Latch” or the “Shhhhh Lock.” The first to take up this challenge will be hailed as a corporate hero in this space.

O.K., on to our letter, which has nothing to do with doors:

Q. I was in South Africa in May and was assaulted by three people in Johannesburg who took my phone and other valuables. The next day, which was May 2, I filed a police report and, when I arrived back in the United States, I closed the account at the first available opportunity, which was May 4.

I’ve had a $39.99-a-month plan with T-Mobile for years. My bill for that month was $25,571.14. I told T-Mobile that I was mugged, and faxed an affidavit of the police report. I got some follow-up calls, but none of the callers knew the history of the case. The departments that were supposed to get back to me never did, and whenever I called T-Mobile to follow up, I was told that the concerned departments would call soon. That did not happen. Now T-Mobile has transferred the bill to a collections agency. Neither T-Mobile nor the agency has disputed my evidence, but they continue to harass me. Can you help? Hasham Mahmood

Washington

A. Let’s get to the most blazing question: How does anyone, thieves included, rack up $25,000 worth of cellphone charges in just three days?

Mr. Mahmood e-mailed his bill. What you see is that somehow a call would begin at, say, 5:08 p.m. and last for 21 minutes. A minute later, at 5:09, a new call would begin and last for 25 minutes. In one half-hour period on May 1, a dozen different calls were placed within 20 minutes, at a total cost of hundreds of dollars.

A rep from T-Mobile explained this mystery with two words: conference calling. Further elucidation was not forthcoming.

This is a timely topic because, two weeks ago, the Federal Communications Commission and wireless carriers agreed that within a year, carriers would start sending alerts to customers who are nearing their monthly limit for voice, text and data services. But even if that system were in place, it would not have helped in the peculiar circumstances encountered by Mr. Mahmood.

Now, there was a three-day lag between the theft of his phone and his close-my-account request. Mr. Mahmood, who works for the World Bank, explains that he didn’t know how to dial T-Mobile’s support number from South Africa and that he was busy flying home for much of the time that calls were being logged.

The Haggler thinks that he should have found a way to send up a semaphore signal to T-Mobile, perhaps via the Internet, while in South Africa. But here is the question for T-Mobile: When an account goes from $39.99 a month to $25,000 in three days, isn’t there some monitoring system that shuts the phone down, whether or not the owner calls?

There is, says Michelle Taylerson, the T-Mobile spokeswoman. And it actually shut down the phone on May 3, before Mr. Mahmood called to unplug his account.

So why did it take two days of multiple conference calls before that system kicked in? The company’s “Care Team” explained in an e-mail that  “typically it takes several days for a foreign carrier to transmit usage records back to us, so there was some delay in obtaining the records.”

O.K. Let’s stipulate that Mr. Mahmood’s situation is the sort of hard case that makes bad law, as lawyers say. And there were failures on both sides here. (The Haggler’s biggest criticism of T-Mobile is the cold shoulder it gave a customer with a legitimate beef about a budget-crushing bill.)

Should Mr. Mahmood nonetheless be on the hook for calls he did not make? T-Mobile took a second look at the matter and last week dropped its demand for $25,571.

“Our Care Team was able to re-evaluate the unusual occurrence and difficult situation Mr. Mahmood was in,” Ms. Taylerson wrote, “and therefore helped find a resolution that was beneficial for the customer.”

E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.

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