IT’S summer vacation time, people, and that is the perfect moment for a vacation bummer story. This one is brought to you by T-Mobile.  Q. In early March, I took a weeklong trip to Lighthouse Reef in Belize. I brought my cellphone, but because there was no service in this very remote atoll, I didn’t realize that the phone had been stolen from my luggage until I was traveling home. Turns out that for seven days a very chatty thief went on a dialing spree, racking up about $2,600 in international calls and data downloads.  In a typical month, my cellphone bill is $46.  I immediately contacted my carrier, T-Mobile, which informed me that I was responsible for all of these charges. I have since paid about half of the bill, and the rest of it has been turned over to T-Mobile’s collection agency.  I think this is grossly unfair. When a credit card company notices spending patterns way beyond a customer’s norm, it suspends the card until it’s sure the card is in the customer’s possession. Shouldn’t a cellphone company do the same?  And isn’t a bill that is 56 times larger than the average of my previous bills a bit of a red flag? I think T-Mobile should forgive the outstanding balance and, best-case scenario, return the $1,363.80 that was already paid to it.  A. What happened to Ms. Furie is common enough that it has a name: bill shock. And in Europe, it’s been deemed such a scourge that the European Union recently passed rules to prevent it. Starting next month, users of mobile broadband phones will be asked to select a monthly maximum for their bills, and will receive a notice from their carrier when they have reached 80 percent of that amount.  The topic of bill shock gained some national attention here a few months ago, after a Verizon subscriber, Bob St. Germain, received an $18,000 cellphone bill. His son Bryan had linked the phone to his laptop and browsed the Web for days on end. The young man was unaware that the two-year, unlimited access period in his father’s plan had expired.  After Mr. St. Germain complained to Verizon, the company agreed to cut the bill in half, and then sent it to a collection agency. The Boston Globe ran an article about the bill in April, which prompted Verizon to forgive the sum. Unfortunately, Bryan St. Germain is still grounded until he turns 40.  Just kidding. More seriously, the Federal Communications Commission took note of the European Union’s action and decided this year to study whether bill shock rules would be a good idea in this country. Yes, appears to be the answer. A survey conducted by the commission found that one in six cellphone users — about 30 million people — had experienced bill shock at least once. Nearly a quarter of those said the shock involved sums greater than $100.  “These are rarely cases in which a phone is stolen, or cases like the one in Boston,” Joel Gurin, chief of the F.C.C.’s consumer and government affairs bureau, said. “Often complaints stem from international calls and people who unintentionally go over their data limits, or encounter unexpected roaming charges.”  According to the survey, 84 percent of cellphone users said their carrier did not contact them when they were on the verge of exceeding their allotment of monthly minutes. Eighty-eight percent said their carrier did not get in touch when their bill suddenly increased.  Several cellphone carriers, said Mr. Gurin, already offer European Union-style limits to customers, but the practice is not universal. When the Haggler called T-Mobile on behalf of Ms. Furie, a spokesman noted that customers could keep tabs on their usage fees through a feature called My Account, which “provides subscribers real-time information on important items such as current activity, bill summary, plans and services and other options.”  Neat! But not very helpful in Ms. Furie’s highly unusual circumstance, as the unwitting victim of a theft. You’re not thinking about the handy My Account feature if you’re sure your phone is stashed at the bottom of your luggage.  T-Mobile would not say much about the wisdom of adopting rules regarding bill shock. It did, however, reach out to Ms. Furie soon after the Haggler got in touch. A company representative called her to say that not only would the remainder of her bill be wiped from the ledgers, but also that T-Mobile would send a check for the roughly $1,300 she had already paid.  The representative “was delightful and nice,” wrote Bruce Furie, Barbara’s husband, in an e-mail message, “but she had no straight answer why this wasn’t done from the beginning.”  Hmm. The Haggler has a theory. It’s that the phrase “bill shock” translates roughly as “monthly statement delightful surprise” to those earning their living in the mobile carrier world. The bizarre part is that of all the industries in a position to send their customers a heads-up about excessive use, or shut down service when bills start to soar, none are set up as well as the mobile phone business.  They have our numbers, after all. But until the F.C.C. adds some rules, they do not have our backs.  E-mail: haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
The F.C.C. is studying a measure similar to one enacted in Europe, in which cellphone users would be notified if they neared a certain limit on their bills.