Jay Levy went on a Mediterranean cruise. He brought his iPhone along with him, and his family. Presumably, he drank pina coladas, tanned himself in the sun, gorged from buffets, and enjoyed the other amenities a cruise can offer. What he didn't count on was that taking his iPhone along with him would cost him almost five thousand dollars in service charges.

Needless to say, Jay Levy is one unhappy consumer.

He was been calling (probably not on his iPhone) the offices of AT&T Wireless, the service provider for iPhones, in order to get his bill nullified. He feels that $4,800 worth of service charges is bit too much to pay.

How did Jay Levy incur such high charges? Well, that's the funny thing: it wasn't from phone calls. What happened was, in the name of convenience, the iPhone automatically downloads email messages -- even when it is off. So, just by having his iPhone with him, the phone was racking up international data-transfer fees, on the high-seas and Mediterranean islands, and a cost of somewhere between $5 and $20 dollars for a megabyte.

Apple's defense is that the Jay Levy should have foreseen the many thousands of dollars worth of charges that a traveling iPhone racks up. After all, Apple says, they adequately warn customers about the possible charges: after all, somewhere in the 6,707 word service agreement that people have to sign is this line: “Substantial charges may be incurred if phone is taken out of the U.S. even if no services are intentionally used.”

Jay Levy doesn't agree -- a lawsuit may be in the works. His view is that his “unlimited data (Email/Web) service plan should cover the roaming costs, and that the potential (and arguably excessive) service fees were not sufficiently communicated to him, by Apple or AT&T.

Hopefully, some of hundred dollar emails downloaded automatically by his iPhone were at least funny jokes, to better prepare him for nasty shock of his 54 page, $4,800 cellphone bill.