A business owner has been facing bankruptcy after his daughter racked up a huge bill while watching TikTok. However, she wasn’t on a spending spree on the TikTok Shop.
TikTok has become the main source of scrolling for a lot of people, and with a wide range of videos on there, it can be hard to put it down – especially when you’ve got nothing else to do with your time.
In the case of business owner Andrew Alty, he is now facing a massive bill because his daughter decided to watch TikTok while they were traveling in Morocco.
Alty, who owns a curtains business in Manchester, England, discovered the bill when he and his family returned from their travels, as his phone provider hit him with an ask of £42,000/$56,000. That came in two separate bills, which the business owner thought must have been a mistake.
Massive phone bill for TikTok threatened bankruptcy
“I was on my way to the desert. I made multiple attempts to call O2, but there wasn’t much I could do. I could only assume there had been a glitch, or the account had been hacked,” Alty told The Telegraph.
He also revealed that his daughter had scrolled for around eight hours, on and off, which meant that it was costing around £5000 per hour.
The massive costs came because of a clause in the business owner’s phone contract, which allowed uncapped data roaming outside of Europe.
Alty had the bill waived following The Telegraph’s investigation into the case. “They made no effort to inform us, and just allowed the charges to accrue. I don’t understand how they expect any small business to pay that sort of bill,” he added.
TikTok themselves have faced a bill over usage of their platform, as they settled out of court over their involvement in a landmark social media addiction case.
