LANCASTER, Pa. -- Does unlimited text messaging really mean consumers can send as many texts as they want? That's what two friends from the Lancaster area decided to find out.

At the office, in the car, even walking down the street, Nick Andes and Doug Klinger are constantly texting. They both have unlimited plans.

"Basically because of us being bored at work and just texting back and forth a bunch of times and we would try to bother each other," said Andes.

Because they were already sending so many messages they decided to see what the standing record was for sent and received texts. They looked it up online.

"I think initially neither of us thought that the record was beatable; 182,000 texts is a lot of texts," said Andes.

Men Spent March Texting

But Andes and Klinger still wanted to give it a try. So, they spent all of March messaging.

"With my phone I can set up 45 messages to go out at one time," said Klinger.

"I'd put my phone on silent and it would beep at me once the inbox was full and I'd clear the inbox and they would just keep coming,” said Andes.

It didn't take long before they hit the 182,000 message mark.

“By this time we were tired of texting. We wanted the month to be over,” said Andes. “My wife wanted it to be over.”

Men Sent 217,000 Texts

But they kept going and rounded out the month with 217,000 texts.

"It was more of a, 'Let’s just see if we can do this,' more of a joke and just to be funny," said Andes.

But what wasn't so funny was Andes’ bill -- he came home one day to find a box on his doorstep.

When he opened it up, he found thousands of pages of all the text messages and the total bill was more than $26,000.

"And I panicked, I called T-Mobile and I got their attention in a hurry. The lady asked how she can help me and I said, 'If you pull up my account, you're going to know,'" said Andes.

Andes Doesn’t Have To Pay Bill

Andes said he's been assured that he will not have to pay the $26,000 bill. His phone is already showing his normal balance, but he said the representative told him it still must be cleared with corporate.

He just hopes that happens by the May 3 due date because he does have automatic bill pay.

In a statement, T-Mobile said: "We are investigating the charges in question and in the meantime have credited Mr. Andes' account."

Andes said he was told the mix-up happened because when T-Mobile set up its system it had to set some limit, even though the plan is technically unlimited.

The company chose 100,000 and no T-Mobile customer had ever exceeded it before.