If you think your phone bill is too high, you have probably not heard about the Saudi man who was hit with a cell phone bill of almost a quarter of a million riyals. The man recently lodged a complaint with the Makkah Emirate against a phone company for placing him on a credit blacklist for non-payment of an “incorrect” SR244,600 cell phone bill, demanding immediate removal of his name from the list. When the man complained to the phone company that he never used that phone number to make a single call, a senior manager told him that the company did not have the right to blacklist him, he said. The senior manager wrote a report in favor of the man, but the company's higher management refused to remove the man's name from the credit blacklist, he added. Since he has been blacklisted, the man cannot receive any credit services in the Kingdom until the bill in question is paid in full or the issue is resolved. The man found out that he had been blacklisted and his credit had been suspended when he applied to a local bank for a marriage loan, which the bank disapproved pending clearance of his outstanding balance with the phone company. “The phone company issued a phone number in my name to one of its clients whom I know nothing about,” the man said. “Now I cannot get married because of this unfair blacklisting caused by their mistake,” he added. The man urged the phone company to investigate the original application and find out the true user of the phone number. The case is still under investigation with different government agencies, said Lt. Gen. Muhammad Al-Ghamdi, Chief of the Jeddah Police Department.
