A Manchester Father’s $55,000 Phone Bill From His Daughter Watching TikTok in Morocco Is a Warning for Every Traveler

What started as a sun-soaked family getaway to Marrakech, Morocco quickly turned into one of the most expensive vacations imaginable for Andrew Alty, a small business owner from Manchester, England. Alty, who runs a curtain-making company with five employees, returned home to discover that his mobile phone provider had issued him two separate bills totaling approximately $55,000. He initially assumed the charges were the result of fraud or a technical glitch, and he was absolutely right to be baffled. The real culprit, it turned out, was far more mundane and far more alarming: his daughter had been scrolling TikTok.

During the family’s trip to Morocco, Alty’s daughter spent roughly eight hours on and off watching videos on the popular platform. Because Morocco sits outside the European Economic Area, it falls into a significantly more expensive data zone for most mobile contracts used in the United Kingdom. Alty had purchased his phone plan through his business via the electronics retailer Currys, with the service provided by O2. Hidden in the fine print of that business contract was a clause that allowed data roaming outside Europe to accumulate without any cap or automatic block. The result was a charge of more than $5,000 per hour of TikTok usage.

Alty told The Telegraph that he tried to address the situation while still abroad, but to little avail. “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,” he said. The first bill arrived while the family was still in Morocco, adding to the shock and confusion. It was only after returning home that the true nature of the charges became clear.

The financial stakes could not have been higher for Alty and his small team. A bill of that magnitude posed a genuine threat to the survival of his business, putting five livelihoods in jeopardy over a few hours of casual video scrolling. Alty was not shy about directing his frustration at O2. “There’s no way they should be able to charge that,” he said. “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.”

After weeks of complaints and an internal review by both Currys and O2, the entire bill was eventually waived in full. The resolution brought relief to the Alty family, but the experience left behind serious questions about how mobile providers handle uncapped roaming contracts and their duty to warn customers as charges spiral. According to data from Ofcom covering July through September 2025, O2 was already among the most complained-about mobile providers per 100,000 customers in the United Kingdom, alongside Sky Mobile and Three, with many of those complaints related to customer service.

The broader lesson from the Alty family’s ordeal is one that applies to anyone who travels internationally with a smartphone. Video-heavy platforms like TikTok consume enormous amounts of data, and what feels like casual browsing can translate into staggering costs when roaming charges apply. Many travelers assume that their standard data plans will protect them, without realizing that certain contracts, especially business plans, may contain clauses that override typical safeguards. A few minutes reviewing roaming terms before departure, or simply switching to airplane mode and relying on Wi-Fi, could have saved the Alty family months of stress.

The case also arrives at a notable moment for TikTok, which has faced mounting scrutiny over its impact on users and was recently involved in an out-of-court settlement related to concerns about social media addiction. While Alty’s daughter was simply enjoying her downtime, the incident is a vivid reminder of how effortlessly and unconsciously people consume data-heavy content, often without a single thought about what it might cost on the other side of the world.

The average TikTok user opens the app around 19 times per day, and the platform’s algorithm is specifically engineered to make stopping feel almost physically difficult, which is part of why those eight hours crept by so quietly. Morocco is only about nine miles from Spain at its closest point across the Strait of Gibraltar, making it one of the nearest non-European destinations to the continent, yet that short geographical gap puts travelers in an entirely different and far costlier data roaming category. International data roaming complaints have spiked significantly in the United Kingdom since post-Brexit rules ended automatic EU roaming protections for British travelers.

Have you ever been caught off guard by unexpected charges while traveling? Share your experience in the comments.