Debt to Orange

calleyw

My husband has just found his daughter has run up a mobile phone bill to the tune of £240. She has not paid any money to them for the last 3 months. And she locked in to september this year.

She was warned by her mother and father that she was better staying with a payg phone. But being 19 years old she of course knows everything.

She has now coming running to daddy to fix the problem. He is not going to pay the full amount off. He will pay £50 off the bill but that will be taken out of her ISA account that we opened for her. And is to be paid back in the account.

She is student with limited income like about £100 a month from a small part time job. How did she get credit checked to be allowed a contract phone I never know. And her hours with her job have been dropped again.

The question is where do we start. Tomorrow he is seeing her and the first things on the list are:

1) get her to sort out a SOA to where what little she has coming is going. We do know that her mother is charging her rent while she is college :mad: something we are not happy about

2) Ring up orange and pay £50 off the bill and try to get the bottom of what is going on. My husband would like to talk to them as he will take no bull off them. Will they let him talk them about it with her permission?

3) get another part time job to plug the gap.

She has been unable to contact orange as 1) she claims she can't make any calls to orange from her phone 2) there is something strange going on with the phone at home.

She came to her father a few weeks before christmas asking him to guarntee a loan for her. He said no but asked her what for. Contact lenses and christmas presents. :mad: She admits that both her mother and father where right and she should never had changed the phone over.

I am hoping against hope she has learned her lesson now. But pigs might fly.

We have told her she is welcome to come and live with us rent free. She would get reduced bus fares to get to college so that mean she is not paying out so much money.

Thanks in advance.


Yours


Calley

severussnape

hi calleyw

i can understand that you are concerned for your oh daughter, but i have to say having been a 19 year old girl (once many many moons ago) that i can practically guarantee she will not have learned a lesson from this at all.

sorry to say that but my mam said don't get pregnant so what did I do she also said don't marry him (at the registry office in front of everyone aswell) so I am now married for the second time and at the grand old age of 30 have finally grown up.

I do agree though it is wrong that her mother charges her rent when she is in money strife, she must contact orange one way or another to get them to agree a payment plan.

good luck

banger9365

I feel sorry for you and know what your going though, I have a 19 year old daughter to that’s doing the same thing, she got a flat (which I furnished for her) and lasted 7 weeks and then moved back home and got a contract with orange best thing is she changes her jobs faster that I change my socks, plus she got one off them loans that are 117% interest for £300
The best thing we can do is point they in the right direction and hope they take it and stand by them, shouting and having ago has they say do's not work.
Some time you have to let them get in trouble and worry about it (put watch them so they do not do any thing really bad you now what I mean)
I now it hard and it should not happen put they need to learn there way and lets hope we can put some scenes in to them be fore it too late to help them.
Sorry for the little shout.
the way we have done it, to take her cards (solo/bank) off the and give her a allowance each week and what is left go's towards the bill for the flat and we (me and wife) make shore there is enough money for the phone contract out of her wages if there is any that week, if there is not we pay them and get the money back next pay day or the next few wages , put the loan she has to pay out off her allowance, it mite sound harsh put it’s working

keep your chin up they do learn , we did the hard way (one year left and the IVA is gone for good not on credit rating i hope)
one more thing get your daughter to ring them up and try to sort it, and be there with her when she do's it, if she gets stuck tell her to say can you speak to my mum/dad and explain it to them this cover you under that data petection act off 1998 which is a pain for parents that are trying to help there kids at this silly age

grumbler

calleyw wrote:

...2) Ring up orange and pay £50 off the bill and try to get the bottom of what is going on. My husband would like to talk to them as he will take no bull off them. Will they let him talk them about it with her permission?

No. She must call Orange first and make arrangements for him being able to access her acoount with a password. For contract phones access number is 150 from any Orange pay monthly phone or 07973 100 150 from any other phone - for help with any pay monthly enquiry

davisneil

this could end up costing her dearly. If she has not paid for 3 months on her contract, it will almost certainly be on her credit file now and will come and bite her when she comes to apply for a mortgage or credit card, either by being declined or paying much higher interest. If it were my daughter, (Thankfully being 6 months old I have a while yet) perhaps what i would do is settle this bill from the ISA but explain exactly why you are paying it all, then tell her you have granted her a loan and she has to agree a repayment plan with you, signed and everything, and if she 'defaults' then you never lend again and let her get behind again on her phone bill, which will ruin the credit rating.Then maybe she will learn about credit ratings and the impact of any silly decisions she makes and the effect of not paying.

davisneil

Also when you have paid, ask ornge to consider removing those late marks on her file, given the circumstances.

laurak_3

I had a similar problem - it is best to speak to orange - I am sure they could sort out some sort of payment agreement. For the remainder of the contract she should reduce her tariff to the lowest possible (usually around £10) and cut the sim card up. If she really wanted to pay it off quicker she could also sell the phone on e-bay!

grumbler

laurak wrote:

...she should reduce her tariff to the lowest possible (usually around £10)

£15 in fact, she can do this only after having contract for 6 months

and cut the sim card up.

Can't agree. This is wasting money. For £15 she will have 30 minutes. And it is easy and free to keep an eye on the balance via 150 access.

bank_of_slate

Are you sure this is her only debt?

It's possible that she has others too
...Linda xx

calleyw

bank_of_slate_and_nazi wrote:

Are you sure this is her only debt?

It's possible that she has others too
...Linda xx

I think she owes the bank some money for going overdrawn. But she just seems to blame her works for cutting her hours etc.

She has been offered a rent free room in our house. But she will not take it. But she is always moaning about having to share with a younger sister. Yes it is about 15 miles further away from college and a little further from her boyfriend. But she spend all her time at her boyfriends it would not make that much difference. And she would £50 a month better off.

But what can you.

Her mother and stepdad have no idea about money or how to save it. All of them thinks because we have bought a house and had a 3 week holiday in OZ a couple of years ago and run a car that daddy and his new wife are loaded.

No, it is called not wasting all your money going with out and making do to get where we are today.

She claims she has learned we will see.

We also told her that she has screwed her credit record up. She claims she is aware of that. Between her and her father they have managed to get her bill down to £18 a month but she is going to being pay off £40 a month.

My husband paid off £50 off of it for her today. But I am rather worried the little devils at orange will try charging the whole amount to his card. So he is going to be checking his credit card every few days to see. As they seemed to think that he was going to be paying the full amount. He said no it is a token payment.

Getting the money out the ISA is rather hard work as we hold the book so she can't hold of. And she lives in another city 15 miles away from us. And seems to spend all her weekends at her boyfriends and as the building society that holds her account is only open to 12 and my husband has prior commitments on a sat morning makes it very hard to arrange anything. Also her father agrees with me she has to learn. And really the hard way is the only way. If she owned the money to us we would never see it as she would not see it as a real loan.

We have told her that getting a new a job is top of her list. But she works evening and I don't think she really wants to work weekends.

Personally she has no role models to teach her how to handle money. So I think we are just going to be hitting are heads against a brick wall.

Yours

Calley

severussnape

hi calley

i'm glad you got something sorted, but i'm sorry to hear about your frustration.

could you maybe get her to read some of the threads on here, to get her realise how debt can escalate out of control, and how hard people work to get back out of it.