Monday, April 10, 2006

What?!?

I got online to give my treatment of the second story from Mark (coming, I promise), when I say this, courtesy of the AP:

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (April 10) - A Malaysian man said he nearly fainted when he recieved a $218 trillion phone bill and was ordered to pay up within 10 days or face prosecution, a newspaper reported Monday.

Yahaya Wahab said he disconnected his late father's phone line in January after he died and settled the $23 bill, the New Straits Times reported.

But Telekom Malaysia later sent him a $218 trillion bill for recent telephone calls along with orders to settle within 10 days or face legal proceedings, the newspaper reported.

It wasn't clear whether the bill was a mistake, or if Yahaya's father's phone line was used illegally after after his death.

"If the company wants to seek legal action as mentioned in the letter, I'm ready to face it," the paper quoted Yahaya as saying. "In fact, I can't wait to face it," he said.

Yahaya, from northern Kedah state, received a notice from the company's debt-collection agency in early April, the paper said. Yahaya said he nearly fainted when he saw the new bill.

Government-linked Telekom Malaysia Bhd. is the country's largest telecommunications company.

A company official, who declined to be identified as she was not authorized to speak to the media, said Telekom Malaysia was aware of Yahaya's case and would address it. She did not provide further details.


Now I'm going to start working on that story from Mark.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

WTF?!

Anonymous said...

I can't believe I misspelled "powerful"! That last name should read "Tom the Wise and the Powerful (because I'm not logged into Blogger right now)". I forgot my user ID and password. It's saved on my computer but I'm at school right now.

Anyway, this reminds me of the phone bill I got at the Wesley Foundation when my roomate called Vietnam and talked for hours! My favorite part of that whole scenerio was how he dropped out of school and moved out before I could get any money out of him for it.

I still don't think that bill was in the trillions, though. I've said it before, I'll say it again: WTF?!