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iPhone bills land with a thump

Some are hundreds of pages, every moment detailed.

By MADHUSMITA BORA, Times Staff Writer
Published August 16, 2007

The cool phone with the iPod may soon decapitate your legendary tree-chopping record.
	[AP photo]

ADVERTISEMENT [Daniel Wallace | Times] Charles Armstrong, president of Sparklabs.com in Tampa, received a 42-page bill from AT&T after his first month of service for his new iPhone. [Daniel Wallace | Times]

Watch out, Paul Bunyan.

The cool phone with the iPod may soon decapitate your legendary tree-chopping record.

The first bills for the early iPhone adopters arrived at their doorsteps this month. And the bill's bulkiness in some cases matched the hype surrounding the gizmo that some hailed as the Jesus Phone.

The epic-like statements have run into the hundreds of pages for some users, detailing every Internet surfing moment, every gossipy text and mundane call. It forced recipient Justine Ezarik, a Pittsburgh graphic designer and Internet blogger, to shoot a video posted on sites such as YouTube, Revver.com and Break.com. Her message "Use e-billing. Save a forest."

Ezarik became a celebrity overnight this week with her video of ruffling through her 300-page, $275 bill. On some sites, her post has received close to 400,000 hits.

"It's hilarious," she said. "I was laughing hard at the fact that it came in a box."

Not everyone was amused.

"It's ridiculous," said Charles Armstrong, founder of Sparklabs.com, a Tampa-based innovative design think tank. "My first reaction was 'Oh dear God, I must have done something wrong' ... This will be the most expensive bill I've ever had."

AT&T took 42 pages to slap him with the $95 bill. Although the damage to the wallet didn't make him sweat, the bulky bill sure raised some hair.

"I can't imagine them to continue doing this," he said, "because they can get into trouble."

AT&T said it is policy to provide detailed bills unless the customer opts to go paper-free or requests the skinny version of a bill. They've been doing that before the hallowed iPhone's debut.

It should be the customer's decision to make a switch, said Mark Siegel, a spokesman.

AT&T said it could change its policies in the future.

"Who knows?" Siegel said. "But right now the default option is to get a detailed bill."

Not a great idea, analysts say.

Rob Enderle, an independent analyst at California-based Enderle Group, calls the detailed bills a "bad practice."

"It's some executive being stupid," he said. "The waste of paper is really upsetting a lot of folks and it doesn't make sense for AT&T to spend the extra money to aggravate customers."

Britt Beemer, marketing strategist and founder of America's Research Group, calls the detailed bill headache an overkill.

"It's a situation where sanity has run amok," he said. "I do hope common sense will prevail in the long term."

Madhusmita Bora can be reached at mbora@sptimes.com or (813) 225-3112.

[Last modified August 15, 2007, 22:31:09]