Tesco mobile spanked my !!!!!!

KingElvis

Exhortation wrote: »

A few years ago, my daughter tried to get me to act as guarantor for a contract mobile for her and using my bank account to pay the bill. Oh, how I laughed!

Why anyone would do such a thing is beyond my small brain, you give a fourteen year old gal the ability to run up bills potentially into the thousands and then are shocked when they do.

Gals of this age are addicted to phones, the future health implications scare me more than a few drunk or smoking kids.

newbie007_2

Guess it's lesson learnt. I think some parents give their offsprings a chance and it gets abused so no second chance thereafter.

Some teenagers are responsible with these kind of things, a very minority I guess. My neice was 14 when she got taken out a contract for and have kept to the allowance mins 600 i think.

taffy056

My daughter gets 100 mins and 300 texts a month with a vodafone freedom pack, once she spends that she's got to wait until its renewed at the end of the month, she doesn't get any more credit, but we do have the family thing where she can phone other mobiles within the group that doesn't eat her minutes. Its the only thing she gets for pocket money as the rest of £10 a week goes to savings that she can't touch.

I think i'm generous

xbrenx

Neither of my boys have ever abused their contract and run up bills, I'm just lucky I guess. Putting them on a contract was the best for my youngest as he kept using his payg credit so quickly, now he gets unlimited texts and I pay £10 a month. I'm happy.

MissKeith

I think it's always going to come down to the individual child. Both myself and my sister had contracts from age 13. I've never gone over on the allowance as my dad was clever enough to overestimate my usage to avoid huge bills, my sister went over once by £15 and my dad confiscated the phone off her for a month and she paid the bill from her birthday money. One month without a phone for a 15 year old seems like a lifetime, she's now 18 and has not dared to go over since. :rotfl:

In all seriousness though, we were taught how to check our allowances, were made to show my dad the texts we'd request off T-mobile for our allowances and balances on a weekly basis and if we were coming near our limit, would simply have to slow down on our usage. It taught me a huge lesson in financial responsibility and a contract phone has saved my bacon on more than one occasion growing up.

On the other hand, I've had teens come into my work with their parents for contract phones who treat it as unlimited credit. I cringe every time a parent wants to put their child on a cheaper deal without unlimited texts and always try to advise to pay a little extra each month to avoid big bills. Not everyone listens.

KingElvis

Obviously some children will be trustworthy, of the two we have, one I could trust totally because she's sensible, the other I wouldn't trust as far as I could spit a rat with a contract mobile. Not that she's in any way dishonest but I just know that the temptation would be too much and she (me!!) would end up in trouble.

For some kids, their mobile phone is more important than the air to breath itself.

craiglee

thanks to all the replys, this wasn't posted to get the sympathy vote just to point out the fact that although tesco says they have a £90 maximum before it gets cut off is, is infact misleading as i have found out...regards

lozzaman

The thing is, with Giffgaff now there's no longer the PAYG isn't for high users excuse.
I've got quite a bit left on my contract from T-Mobile when I got the Desire. The deal was so good I couldn't refuse as it was basically the SIM free price with all the minutes, texts and data thrown in.

When it expires, if there isn't another good offer like that, I'll be straight to GiffGaff assuming their fair usage policy stays the same and o2's 3G coverage improves. Just today I took a spare phone out with an o2 sim in it to see what the 3G coverage is like round here. My T-Mobile phone sat on 3G nearly the whole time, o2 on good strength 2G, but when 3G popped up it was very weak all but once.