Teen Hit With $2,000 Phone Bill, Blame It On iOS’ WiFi Assist

One of the new features of iOS 9 is WiFi Assist. For those unfamiliar, basically what happens is that when your phone detects that your WiFi signal is weak or having some connectivity issues, it will swap to cellular data without you having to do anything on your end. Sounds like a convenient feature, or is it?

According to a report from CBS News, a teen by the name of Ashton Finegold was hit with a cellphone bill that was over $2,000. According to him, his bill would typically be around $250 a month but this time it went way over his estimates, and he thinks that iOS 9’s WiFi Assist feature is to blame.

Finegold claims that his bedroom is an area of the house where there is a WiFi signal, but he did not know that initially and thought his phone was connected to the house WiFi. The end result was him surfing and consuming more than 144,000MB of data in the process. This isn’t the first time that WiFi Assist has resulted in bill shock.

Several months ago, a couple also alleged that WiFi Assist ran them up a huge phone bill. Others have since filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, despite the company claiming that WiFi Assist is actually not a data hog.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: ios 9