It happens all the time. One Comcast customer was dumped for using too much web service on a plan he purchased because it was "unlimited." The company told him the word referred to the fact he could be on his computer as much as he wanted, not that he could view as many pages and videos as he wanted. And then Comcast tried selling him a more expensive plan. Infuriated, he fought back, launching a fiery blog and a cutting YouTube protest to tell the world he'd been ripped off. And a consumer advocate was born.

In July, Sprint put a cap on its previously "unlimited" data card usage, following Verizon and AT&T. Now, 5 gigabytes is all you get unless you want corporate monkeys to shut off your supply. Americans aren't the only ones to suffer the bait-and-switch defended by dense legalese and bent logic in the Terms of Service contract: U.K.'s Vodafone puts similar caps on its "unlimited" mobile phone plan, as does Canada's TELUS.

Count on it each election season: Our elected representatives finally get off their duffs and start working on things that will actually affect our pocketbooks.

Early this week, Sen. Herb Kohl, who chairs the Antitrust Subcommittee in the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the big four cell phone providers to demand they account for their outlandish recent price increases on text messages. Since 2005, the price of a text message has doubled to an industry standard of 20¢, and perhaps not so coincidentally, it has done so with all four phone providers: T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint.

Kohl, a Democrat from Wisconsin, demanded that the cell phone companies show him paperwork about their price structures, including evidence of what made them decide to raise rates in such a dramatic way. The rate hikes, Kohl says, were "hardly consistent with the vigorous price competition we hope to see in a competitive marketplace," and he intends to look into them.

This is not the first time we've heard of someone running up a huge wireless bill with a laptop computer. This story isn't quite as bad as the C$85,000 bill one family got, but racking up almost $20,000 in charges has got to hurt. Dave Terry got an AirCard from AT&T for wireless access to email and the internet while traveling. AT&T says they told the customer that the wireless plan didn't include international use, but Dave says when he got the card he wasn't told anything about international fees.

Dave Terry's son went to Vancouver in July and used the card 21 times to send pictures and emails. Their 200-page bill totaled $19,730 because of international charges. Dave says that since the family's wireless bill is usually $250 to $300, the company should have alerted them as soon as it got over $1,000.

I have a bit of a different take. Sure, I feel kind of badly that they got such a huge bill. On the other hand, it's the consumer's responsibility to know what the costs are before using the service. If I were traveling internationally, you better believe I'd have it in writing exactly what the cost would be before using the service. And don't expect the service provider to alert you that you're spending money with them.

AT&T could be nice to the family and reduce the bill so that it just covers the company's cost of providing the service. If it costs more for AT&T to provide international services, the family should definitely bear this cost. And everyone traveling internationally should be more careful in the future!

Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Accounting, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.

Today, after many months of procrastinating, I finally called AT&T to tell them to take their "long distance service" off my home phone line. I don't even use the line, much less the long distance. So the idea of paying an additional $5 a month for something that doesn't cost AT&T anything to make available to me, and for something I don't ever use, is just silly.

Of course, it took me many months to get around to making this phone call. (Imagine them collecting $5 a month from hundreds of thousands of customers just like me, who just ignore the issue.) I know, I know. It's my fault for being too lazy to call them. It's just that it's always so painful to call AT&T...

So I call customer service, go through several menus, and end up speaking to a live person. He tells me he's happy to remove the $5 per month charge for the long distance I don't use, if I just pay a $9 fee. Huh? I have to pay you if I want to stop paying you?