The bill - which would have been enough to pay for over 285 return flights from Sydney to London - was a nasty surprise that came on top of an unhappy theft.
The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman said the case occurred after an Australian traveller's smartphone was stolen in Europe. Rather than dump the SIM card, the thief evidently decided to phone up a storm that cost over half a million dollars.
The victim's father David took the cause up with the telecommunications carrier and pointed out that the theft had been reported to police. Some of the calls had been made to Somalia.
But the telco refused to wipe the record while insisting the full amount be paid.
Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Simon Cohen said the case was one of 138,946 made by phone and internet users in financial year 2014. The body will release its annual report on Wednesday morning.
Disputes from customers about being charged extra for exceeding their mobile internet download limits have become the top topic of phone user complaints this year. Photo: Glenn Hunt
It shows that the number of complaints about phone and internet services has reached a six-year low but anger from customers over excess download charges is on the rise.
The improvement in overall complaints was driven by falls in complaints about mobile services, which dropped by 20 per cent to 73,518 in financial year 2014 compared to 2013.
SingTel-Optus and Vodafone Hutchison Australia both experienced substantial decreases in customer complaints that were raised with the Ombudsman.
"We're seeing fewer complaints in terms of mobile coverage and mobile faults related we think to the significant investment by telcos in mobile infrastructure," Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman Simon Cohen said. "So the steps being taken by the industry are positive."
However, disputes from customers about being charged extra for exceeding their mobile internet download allowance rose substantially to become the top topic of complaint this year.
"As networks become faster and consumers want to download more and as phones become better, it's a challenge to make sure there's a match between the sort of data consumers are using and the affordability of the plans they're on," he said.
Australian Communications Consumer Action Network chief executive Teresa Corbin said that customers getting hit with high bills should consider shopping around, with recent data showing most customers used 2 gigabytes of data while using plans with caps of just 1GB.
SingTel-Optus showed the biggest improvement, with overall complaints falling 46.9 per cent from 26,629 to 14,144. Problems with coverage, disputed bills and poor contract information all fell at the telco.
Optus and Vodafone Hutchison Australia also improved the most in mobile coverage, with complaints from both companies falling 60.7 per cent and 58 per cent respectively.
But Vodafone Australia's mobile coverage still reaped the most complaints in Australia despite the fact that it has fewer users than Telstra and Optus.
The Ombudsman received 8143 complaints about mobile coverage from Vodafone Australia's 5 million mobile subscribers in financial year 2014. In contrast, Optus' 9.4 million mobile customers made 1623 complaints while Telstra's 16 million subscribers complained 1526 times.
Telstra's overall complaints rose by 1.2 per cent to 58,009 during the financial year but Mr Cohen said the company also added over 1 million phone and internet services to its subscriber pool over that period.
Mr Cohen said the Ombudsman was working to provide contextual data to better rank the telcos as part of a big picture view.
"There are significantly fewer complaints about Vodafone from consumers than there were 12 months ago," he said. "But I don't intend to comment specifically about the proportions against each of those.
"We've been looking to contextualise our data and hope to be in a position shortly to work with industry to provide that context around the complaints information in addition to the pure trends."
A spokesman for Vodafone Australia said the fall in network coverage complaints was a pleasing sign its investments were paying off.
"We know there is more work to be done, and remain committed to improving our customer service," he said.
Fortunately for Australian travellers, the Ombudsman said efforts by all three mobile telcos to reduce international roaming charges had helped lower the number of complaints about the issue.
This meant that David's son – and the Somali-dialling thief – managed to get away scot-free.
"The matter was resolved without him having to pay the charges," Mr Cohen said.
