to be sick to death of my daughter's mobile phone sagas?

[LineRunner]

My DD (15) persuaded me last year to get her a mobile phone via a 'cheap' contract for her birthday present. The contract is in my name, and I pay the bill. I have the insurance 'care' package. It has been useful, I'll admit, to be able to be in touch with her at various times; and she loves being able to be in constant touch with her friends.

But there always seems to be an extra charge each month for something or other. That's not so bad - I can negotiate her allowance I guess if I'm feeling particularly arsey about this - but just lately there seems to be one thing after another. She lost it when with a friend at a fair. She broke it when she was with another friend whom she claims 'stood on it'.

It's me who has to deal with all the fall-out from this. Just today I was up at 7am trying to get through to the phone company about the latest 'accident'.

Is this normal teenage behaviour that I should endure with a resigned smile? Or should I be taking the damn thing off her?

The contract runs till February, and I've told her no more phones in my name after that.

My DD is gorgeous by the way. A bright spark in my soul. But this is driving me crackers.

we are waiting for dd's contract to be up to cancel it for exactly this reason. Her bill is always more than the contract... and who knows when she will ever finish paying the difference back to her Dad. We don't have insurance so she had a crappy phone until Christmas when Santa generously got her a new one.

umm......
they would phone 999 for free...
or 0800 reverse....

What on earth did people do before their precious children had contract phones?!

If its on orange, which it sounds like as I used to work for them then anyone can sign for the phone! Get your lippy on and get out and dd can sit in on a sat night and wait

If its on orange, which it sounds like as I used to work for them then anyone can sign for the phone! Get your lippy on and get out and dd can sit in on a sat night and wait

If you just don't want her to have that phone, put it away and put the SIM card in a cheap 2nd hand phone off ebay.

Or if you have a not so nice phone swap your SIM card into her phone and give her yours.

I go on MSE quite a bit. There is a whole forum section on Mobile phones, I am sure that they can reccomend a good tarif for a teenager. Gifgaff (not sure of spelling) seems to be the payg of choice on there at the moment, although you dont get a phone, just call & text packages.

Could Mumsnet not invent the perfect mobile phone package for teenage girls?

25 million free texts a day.

Unlimited phone calls to anywhere, anytime. Including to the planets Mars and Venus.

Free uploads of thousands of virtually-identical stupid "Hey I'm posing" photos to FartBoot and Twatter.

100 free annoying loud vibrating 'silent' alert tones guaranteed to go off during family funerals.

All at a flat rate fee of £XXX a month, paid for by their fucking errant fathers direct from their paychecks.

Sorry I've had a Chardonnay.

How can a grown man and a perfectly intelligent teenage girl not be able to buy a bloody phone battery in a major city centre? Aaaaaaagh.

"Children need to be on a contract phone because what the fuck would you do if they run out of credit and were in trouble? How would they contact you?"

Orange offers a 'reserve tank' (or some similar name) - you can go 250p into debt for those 'emergency phone home calls' but obviously it gets returned back to Orange on next top up.

Also for a fiver Orange offers 'unlimited texts' for a month (unlimited on most networks offers about 100 a day, so probably closer to 3000 a month which should be OK for most users).

I do appreciate O2 was in trouble some time ago for their 'unlimited' texts deal because people were exceeding 5000 a month and O2 put their foot down. Watchdog carried a piece about it and no, the users were not teenagers but another group who have legitimate wish for lots of text messages - people with hearing problems or speech problems, who were using SMS for chatting with many friends.

For the OP - I would ask the network operator if they have any way to block the phone from use once it hits a certain amount of cost (ie for the remainder of the month) - eg 25 pounds. Networks can put a block on when someone is abroad (I think the limit is 50 Euro) and warn them they have hit the limit, so why not in the UK too. It seems like parents of teens would be much happier if they knew there was such a limit.

To me, a contract phone plus a teen could spell disaster - and treble disaster if they take that phone abroad for almost any reason, esp if it is a "smartphone" which has internet access.

Seems like a licence to burn cash!

mobiles.co.uk (run by Carphone Warehouse) has the Alcatel OT-255 for 4.90 plus 10 quid phone credit.

Looks like a blackberry with QWERTY keys across the front. Has radio too, but is basic voice and text PAYG on Orange

Sorted :)

Use the 20 quid credit on her phone for calls to her and to Toy Boy, and send them unlimted texts about how bad your day has been OP, for the next 10? months ... that'll teach them!

Or put the SIM into a 'dumb' phone that will not allow (m)any 'extras' to be charged, as the phone doesn't offer internet or anything else that's special... there's a basic Orange PAYG phone for 1p (=mandatory tenner credit for calls) on that Mobiles site, so might be something similar for DD on whichever network your contract is with.

Actually, while your 'perfect teenager phone contract' idea is a bit too optimistic, it might be the case that MNHQ could do something to get mobile networks to have fixed limits on contracts so teens could be 'let loose' while a parent knows the bill can never, ever, exceed some fixed amount they have agreed in writing (and which cannot be altered online because some teens can run rings around parents when it comes to internet use!)

NetworkGuy Thanks and I agree that MNHQ could lobby for a decent teenager service. A powerful voice. (MNHQ not teenagers.) (Although incidentally I once argued vocally that 13 year olds should be given the vote. I must have been pissed.)

I'm not calling TB any more. He said my lunch was "All right". All fecking right? He may have certain assets, but that's out of order.

It would be a great coup for a savvy company to market a safe service for 11-17 year olds; like the bank accounts you can get for them. But I guess they want gullible parents like me to keep coughing up.

I am deconstructing.

I think the contract is expensive tbh, I pay £20 pm, for my phone I get unlimited texts, 500 mins, 500GB Internet usage, BB service etc... and I got the new BB handset.

I'm wondering about two paper cups tied with a piece of string.

I like the idea of the cups, you can use the string to follow your daughter around, too

I think you need to give her a cheap phone and not keep replacing the other one. It's not how the real world works, is it? You don't just get new stuff for free whenever you are careless.
My phone dos not have internet access and all that stuff. Get her one of those. Then the only thing she can do is text and call.

Don't really see the need for MNHQ to lobby for some sort of teenager contract. Give them a PAYG phone. Sorted.

I got orange as well ad use their magic numbers. Means I can call DP for free. Allow them a top up of ten pounds a months and if they want to use more tough life! They can still call emergency numbers and you can still terrorise call them

My dd (13) has
Left phone on bus - found by driver and returned
Left phone in changing room at New look - I phoned it a million times before some bloke answered saying he had it and I met him and he gave it back with memory card missing.
Left phone on desk at school - confiscated then returned by teacher
Left phone on train - never found
Left ipod touch in school - returned
Left DS on bus - lost forever
Left DS on ferry - found by passenger and returned

It drives me CRAZY and all of these things involve numerous phonecalls, trips to collect and sometimes rewards but I like her having a phone now she is getting more independent.

She is payg Dolphin plan with orange £10 per month. Unlimited texts which is good.

Hahaha BrawToken for a moment you had me really shocked at saying 'left DS on bus-lost forever'. I knew it couldn't have been your son but it had me thinking for that long long second before I realised what you meant

End the contract, lose the money, put her on PAYG, give her the £20 per month and leave her to it. At 15 she can and should take some responsibility.

when i was 15 my parents bought me a phone and my dad insisted it be a bill phone in his name.

BIG MISTAKE

Two months in a row the bill was so fat they had to send it in a special envelope.... all texts as i'd get carried away texting friends and lose track of how many i'd sent.

I was switched to PAYG pretty damn quickly and paid for credit out of my pocket money with occasional bit bought for me by parents.

I also lost several phones, broke three of them and one even made it home without me one new years day thanks to a kind taxi driver who found it and rang my dad's number to find out who it belonged to and drove it to the house whilst i was at work with a raging hangover (which resulted in a bizarre phonecall when i asked one of the bouncers to ring it for me and find out where it was and he decided to pretend to be my dad to try and scare the 'thief' into bringing it back to me, except he was talking to my actual dad so the conversation resulted in 'No it's my daughters phone' 'No mate, it's my daughters phone so give it back' 'Who the hell are you, this is my daughters phone?!' )

My parents only ever bought me the first phone though, all the rest i paid for myself.

PAYG is ridiculously expensive compared to contract - but the phone companies won't put limits on any more. For various reasons I have a phone going spare, paid up with a reasonable amount of calls and texts for the next 18 months. I called Vodafone, as I thought my 8yo DD could use it when she's playing out, so that I can call her to come back in rather than dragging her younger sister out to get her. (She's not great at telling the time, getting there but not reliable). They can block the internet functions, but they can't put a financial bar on the phone apparently, nor can they send a text when you are approaching your inclusive limit. So she won't be getting the phone - I trust her, but she could so easily make a mistake and over-use her limit and be none the wiser.

housemum - re PAYG - things are not always horrendously expensive.

ASDA PAYG will cost 10p per min for voice and 6p per text from the end of May [8p and 4p right now], with no minimum monthly top-up [ie credit stays valid for weeks, or options for bundles for heavy text/voice users]... and has basic mobile phones from about a tenner, so should be reasonably affordable. Asda SIMs use the Vodafone network, and will work in Vodafone phones too. Asda used to sell 'unlocked' phones but any marked Asda are now locked to Asda (unfortunately). One thing about Asda is they don't (generally) enforce the 'plus 10 pounds top-up' which is the norm with Carphone Warehouse, Argos, and many phones bought online from phones4u, Tesco, Dixons/Currys etc.

Thanks for all the tips and weird and wonderful stories; I feel a bit better now. SummerRain made me laugh.

DD's now on her final chance with the contract phone, and understands this. When the contract's up she can find herself a good PAYG deal.

And I made it up with Toy Boy. He's just too good at it.

Final point - thank the lord there are honest people out there who actually return lost phones and I-gadgets.

I have a PAYG phone, as long as I top up 10 pounds a month I get unlimited internet, unlimited texts and of course I still have the 10 pounds credit to use and then I get another 10% of everything I top up back.

I'd hardly call that hideously expensive

I think if parents made the DC pay for their own phone and usage then they wouldn't have this trouble, even if they gave the DC the money for the phone in extra pocket money iyswim. My DC's phones are their own and they have to pay for usage. Voila - no phone has been lost, nor have they gone over their set amount. Works wonders.

I got a stop put on my DD's phone so when she goes above limit, she can only text and not make any calls at all. It has worked - though caused big arguments at the outset. You can do this with 3 network and Tmobile.
It hasn't stopped the 'breaking' of phones. An average one lasts 6 months. She now has to buy her own which has slowed the breakages a bit, but not altogether. But the getting a stop when she goes above limit is BRILLIANT!