Help my DD ran up a £240 mobile phone bill

FabuLass

I logged on to my internet banking account this morning and saw that o2 had taken £240.44 by dd this morning....I went and found the o2 bill (stupidly left unopened) and realised that £240.44 was indeed the sum they were asking for.

I asked my daughter if this could possibly be correct as she has unlimited text messages and 600 minutes allowance per month. She said "no, it must be a mistake because I always check my balance and I don't go over my minutes."

She has been on her phone a lot recently, I asked her about this on a few occasions and she said it was her friends calls and as they had unlimited minutes this was ok....however, after phoning o2 I've found out that she has gone over her minutes by 1036....and she has made over 27 hours of calls...that's not counting the hours she must have spent receiving calls too....

We are very tight for money but my Dad had offered to lend me the cash and we can pay him back so I'm relieved I won't need to incurr bank charges if I couldn't have afforded our bills. My husband is going to ask for overtime so we can pay my Dad back.

The question is....what do I do about my daughter? Naturally I've taken her phone away...telling her she won't be needing it as she won't be going anywhere for a very long time. I feel I should have been able to monitor what she was up to a bit better but a lot of her calls were made hours after lights out and even when we give her the phone back in future I'm going to take it away at bedtime.

We give her £10 pocket money a week....should I stop this for a while...but 24 weeks with no money is a bit much....should we give her only half and keep half towards the payment?

We can't change her tariff til April next year....and we can't put a block on any calls going over the allowance....

I'm so upset that she could be so unthinking and leave us in this kind of mess....I've told her she'd better think of a way to earn some cash...

What do you guys think? I feel she needs to be punished, but I don't know what is the best way, I don't want to go over the top but if it wasn't for my Dad we would be seriously struggling because of her....any advice would be gratefully received.

whitewing

How old is your daughter?

I agree that any punishment should not go on for so long that it becomes ridiculous.

Pee

I do think it's important to know how old she is.

One option in the future is to buy her a Pay as You Go. With Orange with a ten pound top up you get 300 free texts. There are other similiar deals. I agree that she should do without the phone for a while first, though.

It is bad that she lied... presumably she did lie and knew she had made the outgoing calls. I guess to a certain extent it is naivety and being silly with money without knowing the value.

I would give her the ten pound pocket money and watch her hand it over to her grandfather, she should have a book with the balance shown as falling.

Does she do chores to earn the pocket money? Could she wash up or clean the car to raise more money? This she could then keep or use to repay.

I'm inclined to say if she is old enough to understand, this is her debt, you will help her get out of it, but it is her problem. Could she do some baby sitting or sell some old toys on Ebay?

moiramber

Personally I think a contract mobile phone AND £10 a week pocket money is LOADS!!! Clearly she doesn't use the £10 to top up her phone so what does she use it for? I think Reducing it to £5 would be more than fair in my opinion

pukkamum

Take her phone off her for good and buy her a cheap pay as you go only put £10 a month on it if she needs any over that let her use the contract phone (ony at home in your presence) til the contract runs out.
f she thne needs more than £10 she will have to get a job to top it up more.
don't want to be horrible but i really think giving a child a contract phone is always asking for trouble!!!!

babes21

It depends how old your daughter is too. Personally i agree that i wouldn't let the punishment become too ridiuclous, although it can't be too leniant otherwise she won't learn from the mistake. How about stopping her pocket money for say 10 weeks? At least then she would've paid £100 back, almost half.

I never had a contract phone when i was younger (i'm 24 btw) and i did just fine. I think O2 can barr the calls/texts once they've reached their usage, this could be worth asking?

carolinosourus

I know that when I was younger my mum put a block on my phone that meant I couldn't go over a certain amount of calls, this was on BT and I think o2 did it as well. I could use my contract minutes and texts but then had about £5 over that, if I hit that limit I could only receive calls and you had to call up and make a payment if you wanted to use it any more that month before the new months allowance came into play.

If she's not responsible with her phone and is lying about the usage then maybe she's not responsible enough to have a contract in your name...

afk25

What I would do....

half her pocket money to be paid to your father to make her understand what she has done until the debt is paid off. Will teach her a good lesson that if she racks up bills she has to pay back what she owes.

If her phone is on a contract when it ends replace it with a PAYG

Take the phone off her overnight so she doesn't make any late night calls

Warn her that if she ever runs up a bill like that again the phone will be removed from her permanently and it will not be replaced.

It amazes me how youngsters manage to rack up these bills, especially when they see each other every day........

ChrisCobra

Cancel it and get a PAYG phone , sorted , then she would think before calling everyone under the sun

Bethankim

Hiya,

been there and done thast, my DS did a similar stunt, never again will he get a contract and never again will i pay it.

He paid every penny back all £250 of it - some of it in jobs about the house - I set a monetary value on each job and he paid.

he lost half his allowance

and birthday money he could choose how much to put in but he did..

yes he moaned, screamed called me every name under the sun..my point back was he had the phone with lots of mins, and texts etc and he knew he was way over depsite telling me otherwise, he knew he lied and i dont do lies.

he now has a PAYG phone and he is very care full, his debt is paid and he learnt his lesson - he was 14 by the way

took him 8 months, admittedly most of it was done in jobs but i kinda tohught every time he cleaned the loo he was thinking thats another £2 i have paid

melancholly

i think the biggest issue is that she clearly lied - in a big way - about how many minutes she's used.... over 1000 over a big limit of 600 is noticeable to anyone. it's also a stupid lie as it's so obviously been cuaght out....

i'd say all her pocket money should go to your dad until it's paid off..... cancelling may be tricky as you are still in the tie in period.

maybe this will be a big lesson to her so that it won't happen again?