Basic Trope: A character is charged an enormous amount for a product or service.
- Straight: Alice gets her monthly phone bill. It amounts to $3000, instead of the $30 she expected.
- Exaggerated: Alice owes $300,000 on her phone bill instead of $30.
- Downplayed: Alice owes $300 on her phone bill instead of $30.
- Justified:
- Alice (or someone in her household) made a lengthy international call to Australia.
- Alice was the victim of a scam; someone called, claiming they're calling from the county jail, and fat-fingered the wrong number but only get One Phone Call, and asked if she would forward them along to their spouse/lawyer/etc. She did, without realizing that all calls to her number get forwarded to the other number, which the scammer requested that people call collect. Since Alice doesn't get a lot of incoming calls, she had no idea anything was amiss until the bill came.
- Alice (or someone in her household) has been calling or texting a premium-rate phone number, going over a message or data limit, or doing Microtransactions with the phone.
- Alice is still leasing phones from the phone company, even though that practice became obsolete decades ago. She probably no longer has those phones, as they were rotary phones and now she has a touch-tone phone. The phone company has no incentive to inform her that she's paying them money she doesn't need to be paying.
- Alice got the first year of service for a discount, but now that the first year is up, she has to pay full price.
- It's The '90s, and the phone and the Internet share a phone line. Alice has been spending a lot of time online, and her Internet bill was applied to her phone bill.
- Inverted:
- The phone company pays Alice $300 for using their service, or as compensation for an error in billing.
- Alice's reasonable $30 phone bill in the first month she used it consisted mostly of startup fees. It's just three dollars in each subsequent month.
- Subverted:
- Alice disputes the charges and gets the bill brought back down to $30.
- Alice got Carol's mail by mistake.
- Alice owes $300, but she's a billionaire, so to her it's chump change.
- Double Subverted:
- This month. Next month, the computer goofs up at Tropeland Bell, and she receives another $300 bill.
- As much as Carol owes on her bill, Alice owes more.
- She still thinks that's excessive for a phone bill, rightly or wrongly.
- Parodied:
- Alice is charged so much money that the phone company brings her into lifetime indentured servitude.
- Alice's jaw drops at a perfectly normal phone bill. It's not an unusual sum, she's just a cheapskate.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice's phone bill changes from month to month: sometimes she's overcharged by mistake, sometimes she's charged the correct amount, and sometimes she's undercharged (or even refunded money) by mistake.
- Averted:
- Alice doesn't have a phone.
- Alice doesn't pay bills.
- The phone bill is in Bob's name.
- Enforced: ???
- Lampshaded: "How is my phone bill three hundred dollars?!"
- Invoked:
- Alice gets drunk one night and dials a random phone number ... which happens to be an Australian number.
- Alice calls a 900 Number and is billed for every minute on the line, both the extremely long hold and the time spent with the operator.
- Alice's Phoneaholic Teenager sends way more texts or spends more time online with their phone than their data plan allows for.
- Alice's cell provider blackmails her when she sends her nude selfies to all her contacts.
- Exploited: Connor has Alice forward him to another number ... and all other calls to Alice's number end up going there, too. Connor then tells his friends to call him collect on Alice's number, so he won't have to pay the bill.
- Defied:
- Alice keeps a watchful eye on her phone bill and immediately disputes anything that doesn't look right.
- Alice makes sure to Read the Fine Print on her phone contract.
- Alice uses parental controls to keep her teen from going over message and data limits, or at least gets a plan with unlimited messaging and data.
- Alice has the phone company block calls to international and premium-rate numbers, as well as blocking collect calls.
- Alice decides that since she doesn't really use her home phone, she is going to get rid of the landline and just use a prepaid cell phone or a VoIP service with either no fee at all or a small, fixed fee.
- Rather than use a conventional home phone or cell phone provider, Alice signs up for something like Google Voice. It only works on the Wi-Fi, but it also means Alice doesn't get a bill (other than what she's already paying for Internet service and/or a hotspot).
- Alice keeps abreast of current phone scams, and is Genre Savvy enough to hang up and block the numbers.
- Alice blocks calls from anyone who's not on her contact list, so that scammers cannot reach her.
- Discussed:Bob: Alice, you haven't called me in eight months. Why?Alice: My folks revoked my phone privileges after I ran up a three-hundred-dollar bill.
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: the mail includes a triple-folded list carrying the Verizon letterhead.
You've racked up a three million dollar internet bill by just browsing TV Tropes all day?!
