A man apparrently was charged over $9000 for less than 2 weeks of service.

Sprague previously had a wireless card plan with unlimited usage that he says a salesperson told him would continue. A wireless card enables a computer to connect to the Internet without cables.

So, from their laptop, he and his family surfed the Net - into a virtual tsunami.

Nearly $9,500 worth of surf, Sprague found on his first bill in April.

"Lo and behold, it was no mistake," says Philip Valente Jr., a board-certified attorney who last week filed Sprague's lawsuit in state court against the wireless company.

"This case is either the classic bait-and-switch situation or, worst case, just a blatant attempt to get people in a contract where they don't know what they are getting into," Valente said.

Sprague's nearly $9,500 bill is not even for a full month.

Sprague and his family racked that up in the first 11 days of use, according to the suit, before the wireless card was damaged when the laptop slipped out of his wife's hands.

"I was ticked off at her for breaking the card, but she was doing me the biggest favor in the world," said Sprague, 48, of West Palm Beach. "At least it stopped there."

Sprague claims in the lawsuit that only when he took the whopper bill back to the Circuit City kiosk where he got the service did he find out that the wireless plan was not unlimited.

It included a 49-cent surcharge for each megabyte over 5 gigabytes of monthly use.

According to the lawsuit, Sprague was not given any written contract when he re-upped with the wireless company. Only after the bill arrived did he see those fees documented.

A Florida-based spokesman for the wireless company, Chuck Hamby, said generally all wireless plans require contracts. "Should a customer claim they didn't know about something, it's usually all in the contract they signed," he said.

Hamby said he has never heard of a customer with a $9,500 bill, but the company has in the past worked with customers with overages.

"We want to make the customer happy," he said.

Sprague said his children - ages 16, 12 and 8 - were using the laptop while on spring break, and he's not sure what accounts for their mega-charges. It may have been movies or videos, or there are also sites where they can post a photo on their own Web page, he said.

"My kids are good kids. Basically, I'm just flabbergasted," Sprague said.

Attorney Valente, whose specialty includes consumer protection suits, is seeking a court order to keep the wireless company from "suckering" customers into deals like this.

And the documentation they provided later?

"Lawyers can't even read the things," he said.

Valente also is seeking a penalty from the company, saying it violated Florida's Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act.

With the rise of mandatory binding arbitration, it has become harder lately for consumers like Sprague to sue cellphone providers, said Jean Sternlight, a law professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who has written books on arbitration.

Cellphone companies frequently include arbitration agreements in their contracts, in which the customer agrees not to sue the company in court but to resolve any disputes in a private proceeding with an arbitrator.

Valente said there has been no arbitration language in the paperwork he's seen.

Sprague says his hope is to not have to pay the bill, which now is more like $10,000 with additional charges - including a $175 fee for canceling the contract.

"This whole thing, I just can't believe it," he said. "I can believe $300 or $4,000 ... but $20,000 a month? I never would have agreed to anything of the sort."



(*NOTE* we took out the name of the company)