...if your 15 yr old Dd went to a party last night and let her £500 iPhone drop down the back of a radiator...

[spudmasher]

I've phoned the dad of the party girl and asked him to get a quote from a plumber for removal. She left it unattended and down it went. She says it was charging, but how would it have dropped if it were plugged in??? V suspicious. At the moment, I'm feeling that if she can't look after it, she is not ready to have if. Fuming. What would you do?

Phone charging cost...

iPhone charge has an output of 5watts apparently
Plug in for an hour
Based on average UK electricity prices in Sep 2014 = 0.08p per hour.

I'm not going to worry about DD allowing her friends to charge their phones at that tbh.

www.sust-it.net/energy-calculator.php

You need booble plate lady's husband, he'll get it out no probs!

Dropping a phone somewhere bizarre happens to the best of us.

I cant believe leaving the phone there was one of your options.

If it was charging why can't you use the charger lead to pull it up? If it went down it will fit to come back up.

As others have said, removing a radiator is not a big job.

What makes you think she didn't ask LIZS?

Hadn't considered how much/little it might cost tbh. I wouldn't begrudge it if asked or for dc friends. Would still ask myself though, just as I would for a glass of water, to use the loo, borrow a book, use their wifi etc Anyway we digress ...

and no , no idea if she did ask , maybe she had but at a party in the grand scheme of things it was probably inconsequential .

I guess it depends on how close a friend really Liz - if someone I don't know well, I'd ask for all those things. With close friends I wouldn't ask to use the loo, I'd just excuse myself and go. And when staying over at good friend's houses, I no longer ask if we can charge our phone - I just do it int he bedroom we are staying, as do they when visiting us.
But I do think teens will be far more relaxed with one another - so after the first time of asking probably wouldn't feel they had to ask every single time, other than to just ask their friend, rather than their friend's parent each time.

Funny, I would still never presume to just charge a phone without expressly asking , guess kids are different

This post seems to suggest you think she didn't ask for permission.

Just unfold a metal coat hanger.

Bend one end to make an L shape.

Wrap 5-6 layers of duct tape round the flat bottom bit. Then push it down and round the phone and pull up.

If that doesn't work add some strong double sides sticky tape and try again.

If that doesn't work place a tea towel at the bottom of the radiator. The slide a stick or opened up coat hanger down each end of the radiator attach each end of tea towel to each stick and pull upwards slowly.

This will cradle the phone and bring it to the top.

If the tea towel is too think use a thinner piece of fabric.

Let us know how you get on.

In context of a party I would suspect not but I'm happy to be considered wrong !

surely it can't be that hard to retrieve, is the dad not very helpful? i would be trying really hard to rescue it if it were my house!

love how lots on here berate op for letting child have expensive phone in first place

The new iPhone's are very slippy and quite easy to drop (unhelpful I know)

ds dropped his netbook and broke the screen. He paid for the replacement and we fixed it together. It was a useful lesson, I think that natural consequences are great to learn from.

So in this circumstance assuming that your dd and the party girl are friends and her parents are OK to have her play around with the radiator then I'd send her off there to try and fish it out herself using all the potential tricks.

Otherwise I'd organise with the parents to have the radiator removed/moved and the phone retrieved and have the dd pay for it, plus do something nice for the family. I think this is the option the OP has chosen.

This sounds like the sort of thing that would happen to me, so I'd be fairly forgiving of the event itself.

Rad flush against skirting board. No way in from the bottom. Phone concealed by bracket. Think 'most tricky phone down rad' situation and this it what we have here.
The course of action is decided. Thanks all.

I've dropped 2 phones down the toilet. Accidents happen..

According to 95% of the respondees on my spin-off thread, your dd's phone is nowhere near worth £500. So I hope that is of some comfort to you spud.

If you buy an iPhone 6 from Apple then it's at least £500

store.apple.com/uk/iphone

Mintyy:

If you fished out said phone & sold it, you wouldn't get £500 for it.

If you wanted to buy the same phone secondhand, you wouldn't pay £500.

If you had this model on a contract, you might spend £500 paying for it over a couple of years, at the end of which the handset would belong to you & you could recoup a fair bit of its cost by selling it.

If, however, you were making a like-for-like replacement (say if the phone was broken when retrieved, & not covered by insurance) by buying the same model outright brand new, you might very easily spend that much.

This is why the OP is not unreasonably irritated with her dd!

BBQ tongs ?

you can get something called a rad kit off Amazon to help remove radiators ( don't understand it but makes it easier apparently) costs about 30 quid. Must be fairly easy as my dp used it with no issues and he's no handy Andy.

Oops just noticed I'm a few months too late...