The $83,000 Cell Phone Bill

Copyright © 2009 National Public Radio®. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

ALISON STEWART, host:

Welcome back to THE BRYANT PARK PROJECT from NPR News. I'm Alison Stewart.

TOURE, host:

I'm Toure. It's time for The Ramble, news that you can't really do anything with.

(Soundbite of laughter)

TOURE: But we're going to give it to you, anyway.

STEWART: All right, this is something that we like to call, The Ramble. Rachel Martin, are you in?

RACHEL MARTIN, host:

I am now.

STEWART: All right. All right. I read you this story. I know you'd be done - people have been reading about this quite a bit. Celine's last show in Las Vegas - of course, I meant, Celine Dion.

MARTIN: Dion.

STEWART: Four-thousand fans said goodbye to her "A New Day" performance. You know what? She did 717 performances. Three million people saw that show. The final (unintelligible) Vegas performance was Saturday, seven costume changes, several speeches, and now, Celine, hitting the road.

MARTIN: People love her, people hate her, people love her - I don't know.

TOURE: You could consider her, arguably, one of the greatest voice in the world…

MARTIN: Oh…

TOURE: …and not the greatest voice in the world.

MARTIN: I'm glad you said it. I, you know, I agree. I agree with you.

TOURE: You may not love…

MARTIN: You may not love the content. You may not - you may think she's cheesy and overbearing, and she is all those things.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: I like her.

TOURE: But you love her.

MARTIN: I love her.

MARTIN: Like power ballads. OK. Toure, your turn.

TOURE: There was a 22-year-old Canadian oil field worker, racked up an $83,000 cell phone with Bell Mobility. I guess if he's got Bell Mobility, he doesn't have an iPhone. How did he get an $83,000 bill? Well, he thought he could use his cell phone as a computer modem, which you can.

(Soundbite of laughter)

TOURE: But his cell phone plan offered multiple mobile browsing plans, just $10, but that didn't include downloading movies to your computer and God knows what else things that I don't watch, but other people do. What else would it take to charge 80-K to your cell phone?

MARTIN: That's a lot of money.

TOURE: They rebated him $3,400 out of goodwill, but that just gets him down to like, you know, 79,400 and like, 600. So, he's got a long way to go.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: That's bad.

MARTIN: Okay, I'm going to tell you about a story. This is a story about the reliability, if not promptness, of the U.S. Postal System.

STEWART: Okay.

(Soundbite of laughter)

MARTIN: A holiday postcard which was mailed in the 1914 has been delivered 93 years later.

STEWART: That does not make me feel good, because I literally walked across and mailed my Christmas cards at the Bryant Park post office this morning. Are you telling me there's a possibility…

TOURE: But it also makes…

MARTIN: But at least it'll get there.

TOURE: But it also makes you feel like they are dogged and they will get it eventually.

MARTIN: I know. Come hell or high water. Let me tell you about this. The card was apparently - it was this postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl, and it was supposed to married to this - married - mailed to this woman in Oberlin, and it was lost for years and years and years. And then finally, someone dug it up, and they were really intent on mailing to a family member. So they finally got it.

STEWART: Well, Heather Benjamin in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, I did send you a card this morning.

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: I hope you're around in 93 years to get it if it takes that long.

All right. This is a story that sounds, wow, the greatest thing that happened to you on the surface, and then people start grabbing for your money and it's bad. A contractor in Cleveland, feuding with the owner of the house that he worked on, they found cash hidden behind the wall in the bathroom.

I've heard these stories before. $182,000 hidden in the wall, some were rare bills from the '20s. If you put it in terms of collectors, what they're worth, the whole thing ultimately worth half a million dollars.

TOURE: Nice.

STEWART: Now, the homeowner offered the contractor a 10 percent fee, but the contractor says, 40 percent of the money is his because he found it, you know, finders keepers, losers weepers, to coin that…

TOURE: But I own the property…

STEWART: …kindergarten line…

(Soundbite of laughter)

STEWART: …principal that we all loved so much. The contractor's lawyer said he's planning to sue the homeowner to turn over the money. The homeowner says the contractor's trying to shake her down. Now here's the sad part: The homeowner and the contractor, friends since high school.

MARTIN: Ah.

TOURE: Doesn't everybody think the contractor's trying to shake them down?

STEWART: In one way or another.

MARTIN: Don't mix business with friendship.

TOURE: It - speaking of mixing business and friendship, Dallas Cowboy QB Tony Romo keeps bringing his girlfriends to the game, his celebrity girlfriend, and it seemed to impact his play. On Sunday, his current girlfriend, Jessica Simpson - remember her from "Newlyweds" - was watching the game from a luxury suite, wearing a cute pink Cowboys jersey, with Romo's number on it, of course. And the Cowboys lost a very winnable game to the Eagles…

(Soundbite of laughter)

TOURE: …10 to six. And Tony had a bad game. He was 13 for 36, his lowest single-game rating of his career, 22.2. And he hurt his throwing hand, and he had to cry after the game. The L.A. Times facetiously called it the Jessica Jinx.

(Soundbite of laughter)

TOURE: Ouch. The last time he did really badly, his previous girlfriend Carrie Underwood was there. And the Eagles beat the Cowboys 23 to 7 as she watched. Could be performance anxiety, could be that he's jealous that Tom Brady has Gisele.

STEWART: Focus, people.

MARTIN: Focus.

STEWART: I mean, what's the deal? You're a professional. Tony Romo, no girlfriend for you. During the season, anyway.

Hey, that does it for The Ramble.

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