WARNING: DON’T TRY TO DOWNLOAD A MOVIE WHEN TRAVELING ABROAD

Data roaming charges while traveling overseas can often surprise vacationers when they return home and see their bills. What many don’t realize, however, is how much data is consumed when downloading a movie. Stacey Withers, a British dental nurse, has told the London Daily Mail that she knew it would be expensive when she decided to download a five-minute portion of DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar in the hope of calming her three-year-old son Joel, who had contracted an ear infection while on vacation in Turkey. What she did not expect was a bill for the equivalent of $1,800 from her mobile phone company Orange for that brief download — more than the entire cost of her trip. “My three-year-old son had been crying for nearly six days because of an ear infection,” Withers told the Daily Mail. “He is mad for Madagascar and I knew it was the only thing that might get him to calm down.” She acknowledged that she “was expecting it to be bad, maybe up to [$500] for the download but I couldn’t believe it when it said [$1,800].” Orange told the newspaper that it warns customers about the high cost of data roaming overseas and that it ordinarily caps customer charges at $80 for roaming. “In this instance,” it said, “the customer contacted Orange to opt out of the cap.