Casual Neil Diamond fan Katie Bryan has paid £2,600 for a Neil Diamond album.
British maths teacher Katie Bryan was visiting her boyfriend's family in South Africa when she downloaded 'The Essential Neil Diamond' from iTunes to her phone for £8.99. Alas, when she got home, she found her bank account was more than £2,000 overdrawn as a result of a direct debit of £2,609.31 ($4,636.77 AU) to phone company Orange.
Downloading the Neil Diamond album used 326 MB of data, charged at £8 per megabyte once her 10MB monthly foreign allowance had been used up.
The best part? Katie's not even a big Neil Diamond fan, and she already had a copy of the album at home.
"It was a lunchtime get-together with my boyfriend's family at a house where we were staying near the Kruger National Park," Katie told The Telegraph. "I'd had a bit of wine but not too much.
"People were playing music through their iPads or on phones through an iPod dock. Someone had put on the Traveling Wilburys but I just fancied hearing some Neil Diamond. I don't know why. He's more my boyfriend's musical taste and I'm more of a James Blunt fan.
"It wasn't a particular song that I wanted to hear. I'm really not that big a Neil Diamond fan. And I'd already got his Essential Neil Diamond CD at home, in my car."
Oh, Katie. Katie, pls.
The phone company eventually showed mercy to Katie and sold her a backdated £400 bundle, taking £2,209.31 off the bill.
"You hear of people doing this and you think, 'stupid person — why did you do that?' I do feel foolish," Katie admitted.
"But I also feel it is morally wrong to be expected to pay this sort of money for a Neil Diamond album."
