Liz Szalay, a mother of a teenager was shocked when she saw her 14-year-old son’s phone Verizon Wireless bill. He’d run up charges of $2,000 over two months for searching and downloading songs.

According to a secretary in Niles, Michigan, she would never have allowed her son to accrue such charges, if she had known.  She withdrew money from her 401(k) retirement plan to cover the expense. What she did to prevent this from happening in the future was have her Internet access completely blocked by Verizon, but not before they made off with a boatload of money.

The U.S. Federal Communications Commission should make it compulsory for carriers to caution customers before they get hit with high bills. Next week, the agency will consider requiring companies to alert customers when they approach limits on their contracts. Carriers including Verizon Wireless have fought against such requirements, claiming that they already give customers ways to monitor their usage.

Verizon, the largest U.S. wireless carrier, is also under investigation by the FCC for charging 15 million customers incorrectly for data. According to the company, it will refund the charges, incurred when software inside its phones received or sent signals or customers were mistakenly charged for Internet access.  According to a source, the cost to the company will be about $50 million.

According to the company, data and talk time beyond a customer’s plan is generally more expensive. Verizon customers can use unlimited amounts of data on their phones if they sign up for a $30-a-month plan. Without a plan, the company’s customers pay $1.99 per megabyte of data so those who surf the Web regularly or download songs like Szalay’s son can pay substantially more. Customers who stream music for five minutes a day can use 183 megabytes of data in a month, which would cost people without a data plan $364. Five minutes a day spent downloading games can use 440 megabytes.

As per Michael Robinson, a senior vice president of Levick Strategic Communications, customer complaints about billing have attracted more attention to the industry this year, and the carriers are risking a perception that they’re trying to take advantage of consumers if they don’t communicate better. Any time as the company have the opportunity to reach the customer, they should take that. Looking at the opportunity to reach out the customers is a good thing.