Most people get a page or two when their phone bill comes in the mail.

Not Wanda Rooney.

Since July, the resident of Ste. Marguerite du Lac Masson, Quebec, Canada has received phone bills the length of short novels.

“I have been getting 20 pages of phone bills every month,” Rooney said.

Rooney says she racked up $47,000 in one week after being instructed by a Bell customer service representative to connect her cellular phone to the new laptop computers her daughters Alexandra, 17 and Victoria, 15, received as a gift.

The laptops would not work with the dial-up Internet service Rooney subscribes to as high-speed Internet lines don’t reach her rural home. So Rooney was told to get a mobile Internet stick, which would plug into the USB ports of the laptops. However, Rooney drove to three Bell stores, only to be told the mobile sticks were sold out. So she called customer service to ask what her next step should be.

“The guy on the line told me: Oh, it’s no problem. Your cellphone has unlimited Internet, so you can just connect your phone to your computer.”

After Rooney asked three times if there would be an extra charge, Alexandra stayed on the phone with a customer service representative for about an hour to figure out how to connect the phone to the computer to get Internet service.

A week later, all of Rooney’s phones were disconnected. She borrowed a phone and called Bell customer service.

“When I spoke to the agent, he told me I had a very high balance,” she said. “He told me $47,000, and then told me I had to agree to pay a minimum payment of $300 for my phones to be reconnected.”

Since that day, Rooney’s phone bills have not been less than five figures. Her most recent bill was for $12,000, and Bell has cut off her phone service six times.

Rooney says she has spent hours each month wading through late charges, and fee reversals to figure out how much she owes her phone company, and then hours more contacting customer service agents. Rooney, who subscribes to Bell satellite television, cellphone, land line and Internet services usually pays about $500 per month.

Rooney says the extra charges have been a huge stress on her life, but what has made her even more angry is that Bell customer service representatives have told her repeatedly she must pay a $300 penalty for using her phone as a modem for her daughters’ computers, which violates Bell’s customer agreement.

“I have pointed out many times that it was a customer service person who told me to do this, only to be told that I spoke to the wrong department,” Rooney said. “I should have been speaking with Bell Mobility, not Bell Internet. But you can’t choose who you get to speak to when you call, it’s Bell that chooses.”

Marie-Eve Francoeur, associate director of media relations for Bell said Rooney’s situation is exceptional. She said in most cases when there is a problem, it takes several weeks to investigate, and doesn’t know why Rooney’s case dragged on for four months.

On Tuesday, Rooney got a call from someone named Gina, who said she worked at the office of the president. She apologized on behalf of Bell, and said it was unacceptable for it to take this long to settle her problem. The woman told her all charges had been reversed, and her current balance was $181.16.

“When I heard, I was so happy that I cried,” Rooney said. “She told me, she understood why I went to the newspapers about this because it’s been since July. I gave them a lot of time to handle this and they didn’t. She was really nice.”

From now on, the woman told Rooney she no longer has to contact customer service and if she has any problems, she has a special number to call.

Francoeur said the settlement of Rooney’s problem had nothing to do with the fact that a reporter contacted the company on her behalf, and that the problem would have been solved this week anyway.

Rooney’s not sure she believes that, but she’s glad her ordeal is over.

“I think I’ll still stay with Bell,” Rooney said. “I have been a client for 30 years. But I’m hoping after this that they offer me some sort of compensation for all the hours I have spent looking after these bills.”