outrageous mobile phone bill

[missingtheaction]

DD has run up a massive bill; too big to pay off from her allowance for ages. I have done what I can with Orange to prevent this happening again, and we will be having a Big Talk when she gets back from school.

But what suitable punishments should I put in place that are workable? anyone got anything creative to offer? especially anything that doesn't make my life too much of a misery!

[MamaG]

Not a mum of teens, but how about making her "work" the debt off?

Wash car - £5
hoover stairs - £5
empty dishwasher - £1

etc

[LynetteScavo]

Hoover stairs £5????

[MamaG]

I think its worth a fiver! But I do have two staircases...

[pedilia]

get her a PAYG!

[RustyBear]

Can you switch her to pay-as-you-go? DD is on this & it's much easier for her to keep track. It also encourages her to limit the length of her calls because she doesn't want to run out of calltime at an inconvenient moment.
She has a SIM card which gives her free texts to O2 numbers (which I have) so she can always get in touch with me in an emergency.

When DD ran up a massive landline bill, I made her work it off in ironing.....

[MamaG]

payg good idea

[fizzbuzz]

Is it a contract? I would change it to pay as you talk straight away

[Geri2]

Wow Mama, I'll come and hoover your stairs lol

PAYG great idea, t-mobile have this thing where you top up your phone on a Friday with £10, and you get free weekend texts...

[mumeeee]

Both DD2 and DD3 are on payg. So they can't run up massive bills.

[MaureenMLove]

The rules in my house are simple no credit - no going out. (She on PAYG obviously). I'd switch it to PAYG straight away and then tell her she'll have to earn the credit. Since she won't be going out, she'll need something to do, so she can start with the stairs, followed by the dishwasher, the beds, and emptying the bins!

[MaureenMLove]

BTW, my dd is 12 and she does all of those things!

[IamTheSpeedingHam]

funny you should mention this. my ds recently ran up over hundered quids worth of phone bill

i have no formal consistant method - but i cut the plugs off all his electrical stuff.

i now have much pleasure in saying "no" A LOT every time the words "can i...." enter the conversation

[mellyonion]

i'm not sure, but i think you can bar outgoing calls except for two emergency phone numbers....could you do this and continue to pay off the debt until its all clear....your dd will then be punished by the inconvenience of not being able to make calls, but still be safe (and her mates can still call her?)

in the long term...i agree...earn off her debt. or cut her allowance every week until its paid back...or a bit of both. its flexible...should'nt be too painful for you!

my house needs a damn good clean....she'd make it back in a morning!! lol

[Loshad]

PAYG only here, heard far too many horror stories like yours.
Agree with cleaning to help pay off her debt, and a formal traiff for jobs would probably be percieved as fairer.

[hecate]

Does she have games thingie or tv in her room? Ebay her stuff to pay the bill. Teaches her an important lesson about financial responsibility. Or be a 'bailiff' and come and take her stuff away until she has paid her debt....

Or am I too too horrible?

[MissingMyHeels]

I ran up a £2000 phone bill when I was 15 (I hated my parents and liked talking to my friend who had moved to Brazil, still, blood awful and I was a complete cow!).

I would cancel her contract, put a bar on your home phone so that you can only dial out if you enter a PIN number and ground her as well as stop her allowance. I was made to give birthday and Christmas money to my parents too and they made me get a job and my first three months wages went straight to them.

Suffice to say I have never had a big phone bill again and I morphed into a rather delightful teenager!

[MissingMyHeels]

It took a while!

About the 2 years it took me to pay off every single penny...

[sasquatch]

I have vodaphone payg, the family deal means if I pay £5 a month on my phone we have up to 4 numbers on vodaphone can make unlimited calls to each other. This means ds can always contact me and vice versa, and if he wants to speak to his friends he can put his own credit on.

[PurplePillow]

Yes sasquatch that's what i've got on my dd mobile too. Much easier to control that way and no bill ever!

[Vacua]

mine have a capped contract - once they've used their allowance they have to manually top up or wait until next billing cycle

it was called U-Fix or something from T-Mobile, think has had a name change since then

[Emprexia]

definitely switch to PAYG... i still use it because i don't use my phone enough to warrent being on a contract.

I probably only used 2quid a month, lol.... both DH and i are on Virgin, as is my mother so it only costs us 3p to txt each other.

[missingtheaction]

unfortunately cancelling her contract would cost me over £350 (only 6m into an 18m contract) otherwise she'd be on payg for the rest of her life for everything

thanks for advice ladies - have confiscated/banned everything, stripped her bank account to the bare minimum, will be taking £ from her allowance in future. I don't want to pay her to do jobs I think she should be doing for free, but she will be getting a job this summer.

bizarrely she has always wanted to get a job but termtime she does long hours and saturdays at school/sporting committments so no time, plus gcse's coming up, and we used to live in the middle of nowhere so no opportunity. But she will definitely be working this summer!