Help my DD ran up a £240 mobile phone bill

Kylie

weezl74 wrote: »

Feefeedee, I don't think I'd look at it as giving a punishment. In the grown up world, you spend= you pay. I'd be tempted not to express it as a punishment, merely as a natural consequence.

If you said, quite pleasantly but firmly, 'what ideas do you have about how you're going to pay your phone bill' I'd be interested to hear what she comes up with. I genuinely think this is closest to how it is in the real world, and therefore a valuable lesson for her. And it doesn't make you into the horrible punishing mum!

I like this solution.

andromache_2

Does your DD have an expensive phone which came with the contract? She could maybe sell it and get a cheapo one to help pay for some of the bill? I agree that she should pay for it over time out of her allowance as well.

I was a pretty trustworthy and responsible kid at school but one time I went over my allowance and incurred a £70 bill. I actually had no idea what the terms of my tariff were and didn't know I had gone over as I didn't think I'd been using it that much - obviously rather silly and naive not to have found out how many minutes I had and so on but by the same token my dad hadn't bothered giving me the details. Anyway, my parents dealt with it by getting very angry and cancelling the contract without warning in retaliation. I would much have preferred to have been treated as an adult, paid it back out of my allowance/wages, and taken full responsibility for the bill in the future - as someone else said, you need to learn that in the adult world spending lots of money in this way has consequences. As it was I was just angry at them in return for leaving me stranded without a mobile and for treating me in such a childish way and I don't think I really learned anything from it!

Lunar_Eclipse

To be honest, what I would do all depends on what your agreement with her was regarding the phone and specifically, payment of the bill. It is not clear to me who is responsible financially. Your daughter has rung up the bill, but unless agreement has been made for the bill, it could be deemed no different from the water bill increasing because someone starts showering three times a day. A lesson to be learnt by everyone perhaps.

I would try to focus on the problem and not on punishment.

I would also be discussing the following:

How it happened, especially since she said she checks her minute usage. Was the O2 information correct or did she lie for instance? Also, I would discuss how you both feel about her being on the phone so much and whether the communication could take place via a cheaper and healthier method, for example.

Explain to her that you cannot afford mobile phone bills of this magnitude. Her contractual limits are your financial limits. Discuss how you can pay your Dad back and also what would be sensible and fair moving forward, making it clear that you expect her to pay above and beyond the 600 minutes. It sounds like she needs some kind of management (info) system so she knows when her limit is reached. If you haven't made this clear in the past, I don't think it's reasonable to be saying "you owe us £240" since this becomes nothing more than a (thoughtless but easy to make) mistake. However I am not saying she isn't responsible for her behaviour.

Agree a repayment plan with her if this makes sense. Without knowing your agreement with your daughter I can't comment on what I believe to be reasonable.

Give her the phone back at some point under fully understood and agreed 'rules'.

Switch to PAYG as soon as you can without penalty. Alternatively if you believe the O2 information regarding her minutes was incorrect and misleading, they could be in breach of contract (to you the customer) so will probably agree to an immediate contract termination without penalty. Worth checking out.

Pee

I do think you should take the phone off her completely, but not for very long - by next Monday she should probably have it when she is out of the house for those situations where you are worried about her. It would of course be silly to endanger her in any way by taking the phone off her. A few days with no phone will be a valauable lesson.

Then I agree, monitored. Can you check the balance daily? That might be one suggestion for when things are back to "normal".

Pee

andromache wrote: »

Does your DD have an expensive phone which came with the contract? She could maybe sell it and get a cheapo one to help pay for some of the bill? I agree that she should pay for it over time out of her allowance as well.

I was a pretty trustworthy and responsible kid at school but one time I went over my allowance and incurred a £70 bill. I actually had no idea what the terms of my tariff were and didn't know I had gone over as I didn't think I'd been using it that much - obviously rather silly and naive not to have found out how many minutes I had and so on but by the same token my dad hadn't bothered giving me the details. Anyway, my parents dealt with it by getting very angry and cancelling the contract without warning in retaliation. I would much have preferred to have been treated as an adult, paid it back out of my allowance/wages, and taken full responsibility for the bill in the future - as someone else said, you need to learn that in the adult world spending lots of money in this way has consequences. As it was I was just angry at them in return for leaving me stranded without a mobile and for treating me in such a childish way and I don't think I really learned anything from it!

Sounds to me like you have a pretty sensible approach to money so maybe they did something right.

juliescot

Pee wrote: »

I do think you should take the phone off her completely, but not for very long - by next Monday she should probably have it when she is out of the house for those situations where you are worried about her. It would of course be silly to endanger her in any way by taking the phone off her. A few days with no phone will be a valauable lesson.

Then I agree, monitored. Can you check the balance daily? That might be one suggestion for when things are back to "normal".

That is one thing that is very easy to do on o2 - you can check all the outgoing calls for duration and time of day on the their website.

DS has a contract phone, which I check, he also gets pocket money, and does extra stuff to try and earn money. If there is something he wants he is good at saving and will trade in/sell old things to help finance his purchases.

foxy-roxy

How on earth can people talk so much??? I know teens like to keep in touch but i thought it was all texts, facebook etc? People said the art of conversation was dead:rotfl:
I'd go down the 'i am dissapointed in you' route rather than be angry as that has more effect, i hated upsetting my parents, i used to feel so guilty, if they got angry than i did to.

Alikay

£240 is a lot of money, so I'd be inclined to get her to pay a wedge of it off out of forthcoming Christmas money. If you normally spend say £60 on her big prezzie, count that and just let her have small token gifts this year.

I often think that one major deprivation (e.g. big Xmas/Birthday gift, cash for a school holiday etc) is more effective than lots of small ones - and definitely easier to stick to for the parents. Stopping her going out, having a phone and withholding pocket money will take a long time to claw back that amount of money, and the lengthy punishment might do more harm than good (like isolate her from mates and build up major resentment towards yourselves). She'll understand that the huge bill means no iPod for Christmas or no school trip to France (for example) and the punishment is sharp and focussed.

Whatever you decide, make sure you will be able to stick to it -good luck

chewmylegoff

i have had contract mobiles with pretty much every company except for orange - and i've always had a credit limit. if i go over it the phone gets cut off until i pay the outstanding balance. it's happened a couple of times in the past.

can't you ask the phone company to impose a credit limit of, say £10 or £20 over and above the monthly contract amount or something like that so you don't get any nasty surprises like this in the future? i got t-mobile to reduce my credit limit from £100 to £50 a few years back.

FabuLass

Thank-you all so much for your replies....my daughter is 14, sorry I forgot to add that.


I'm grateful for all your practical suggestions.

I've always been careful to only 'threaten' any actions I'm happy to carry out....that is I used to hear parents saying...."if you do that again I'll do such and such.." then the child does it again and nothing happens....no consequences so no lesson learned, which is why I turned to you guys, knowing I didn't want to say something totally unreasonable and something I'd end up feeling sorry for her and cancelling in a few weeks.

I like the idea of maybe halving her pocket money til the debt is paid....after all her brother and sister aren't getting £240 for nothing! You are right about the phone....it's a nice Samsung Tocco and I'm sure it would be worth something, so that's another great idea.


I've given myself such a headache with tears this morning that I'll write more to you all later and let you know what happens, in the meantime, thank-you all so much....ffd x