Australian family slapped with $30,000 phone bill after Bali holiday

Family slapped with $30,000 phone bill after Bali holiday. Photo / A Current Affair/Channel 9

A Brisbane family has been left in disbelief after arriving home from their Bali holiday to a massive $30,000 phone bill.

The huge debt came as a shock to Craig Piper as he had visited Telstra before the trip to switch his and his wife's phones and their daughter's iPad to international roaming.

But when he opened the bill it became clear that the telco company had not switched over the iPad, news.com.au reports.

"They put my phone and my wife's phone, which is under my name under the data roaming but they failed to do the iPad," Mr Piper told A Current Affair.

Mr Piper said his daughter watched a few videos and played some games on the device during the trip, but just using 10GB of data added up to a bill of $29,325.

He told the show that the bill "put a lot of stress on our family".

"We opened it up and saw the, the amount of money that they were asking for and we just couldn't believe it," he said.

According to YouGov Galaxy, the average international roaming bill for Australians adds up to about $290.

Sabine Leroy from Finder.com told the program planning ahead can help reduce these costs and make sure you don't come home to a nasty surprise.

"Either add a travel pack to your existing plan or buy a travel sim," Ms Leroy said.

Each travel pack deal will differ depending on the phone company.

Telstra offers a 200MB plan with unlimited calls and texts for $10 a day. Optus offers a similar deal but customers only relieve 100MB of data.

Vodafone in Australia offers two different deals, one which lets customers use their current plan overseas for just $5 a day extra and the other is a pay-as-you-go option where each megabyte and call per minute costs $1.

After receiving the bill, Mr Piper disputed the charges with Telstra.

Thankfully the telco company was sympathetic to his situation and waived the entire bill.