Mobile phone bill for £250 when it should have been £10. Now left with £50 to live on for 10 days!

[InsanityandBeyond]

AIBU to want to strangle DS (11)? I only got him a phone as he is now walking to secondary school. It is a £10 price plan but he has run it up in internet usage (£80) and the rest on extra phone calls to his friends.

I checked my bank account today and saw there was a payment pending although I couldn't see what it was. Checked all the internet bills and I saw it . Can't stop if obviously. Only £50 left now until next Friday with 4 DC to feed. It's been a tough month this month as car needed £400 of repairs.

I am fucking furious at DS. He has been told to text and make calls only in an emergency. Last month when his bill was £40 I asked T-mobile to put a block on anything over the price plan and they say they can't of course!

I have rung T-mobile up and ranted at them. AIBU to wonder why they didn't send me an email or call to warn that the bill was over the price plan?

Fucking thieving bastards!

We've probably all experienced a bit of this, whether it's the DC with their phone or on the iPod buying extras with your stored credit card details. You only find out at the end of the month, and by that time you can't do anything about it. Should only need to happen once for you to stop it.

But just how much are these companies making out of our one month only mistakes?

T mobile are indeed thieving bastards. We got stung for about £500 a few years ago when we were new to the dangerous mix of contract phones and teenagers (they'd had pay as you go until then). DH grossly underestimated DS's likely level of usage when he set up the contract and DS (about 13 at the time) went over the number of texts allowed on his contract by a huge amount for a period of about 3 months when there was so much other stuff going on neither of us was checking bank statements.

Yes, you can blame us as parents for not keeping a closer watch on things. No, T Mobile didn't break any laws. BUT, if you have a contract whereby you pay, as in the OP's case, £10 a month, and you start to exceed that by a significant amount, would it really hurt them to get in touch and warn the person who holds the contract? Clearly if you've set up a £10 a month contract you're not expecting to have to pay £250!!

my kids have kindles and in theory could buy loads of books with a couple of clicks - they would not though, and if they did, they would know they would be expected to pay for the error. I know I can trust them, and they come to me asking about books , we see if we can find a cheaper version etc, and we agree to go halves or soemthing. if a child cannot understand actions and consequences, especially when the consequences are as dire for OP as you being short of money for the family's food now, then they don't get to have these expensive luxuries, surely this is just common sense??

What borninastorm said. Also check he's not inadvertently receiving chargeable texts. When something similar happened with ds's phone, it turned out that he'd been receiving joke of the day texts - and trying furiously but totally not understanding how - to stop them. Each was £1, plus I think his responses cost too.

He had no idea it was costing. I'd set his account so that he wasn't meant to be able to accrue any additional charges (premium lines, etc) but this slipped through.

After some argument, T-Mobile refunded the costs.

oh this is a difficult one.

I would have said it was a no-brainer ie no contract - but now you say he has LD and also that you are a bereaved mother, therefore anxious.... well, I can quite see how you can't cope with them not having credit.

I'm so sorry for your loss. How on earth any mother copes with losing a child I really don't know. You're doing well to be standing, it's perfectly understandable that you are anxious about your kids.

How long is the contract? I'd fight this with T-mobile iiwy - lay on all the details and push and push to get the contract off for good. Contact your MP to put some weight behind it (I'm serious - there are plenty of parents in your position with kids/phones, it's a disgrace that some providers cash in on that grrr). You could go to the papers with this story (which could get picked up by the nationals...).

Then go hunting for a more appropriate package.

I hope I'm not speaking out of turn but my kids went through something awful (a significant and sudden bereavement) and, imperceptibly, I was giving them much more slack than was good for them. It really wasn't good for them, I see that now (hard to see at the time...) and I've learnt that, as hard as it is, it's good to tighten up the boundaries. He may have LD but he still has to learn cause and effect: if he has to 'pay' in some way for this, he'll soon get the message. Either jobs, or something drastic to drive the message home. He has to know he can't do this - the £40 was a warning to you, he was gearing up.

As for £ for household expenses, you can cancel direct debits etc this month - call up creditors and tell them you are putting a hold on direct debits for a few weeks, give them an idea when they will be reinstated. As long as you communicate they don't get out the big guns - creditors are much more forgiving these days (everyone having lean times). This should free up some readies to get you through this crisis. You could also have cancelled the dd to T-mobile before it went out (or would you be charged an extra fee?).

There are also foodbanks, of course (for exactly this sort of situ); crisis loans (which you have to pay back!). But I really think making a big issue over how strapped you are by not covering for him ie not going without food but not hiding how strapped you all are because of his mobile bill (which is true! not emotional blackmail!), will go a long way to getting the message home to him.

forget any contract phone. evenbwhen capped there are still a few things that can be added on. Just ho for good old fashioned payg. basic phone.

Your son needs to learn. He isn't the first kid nor the last but at 15 my dc are on payg. Yes they would love to be on contract and yes we would get a better deal package on contract but I won't take the risk.
Have one dc on Tesco payg where credit is tripled. So if you top up a tenner you get thirty quid of credit. Dh is on virgin payg and grts free weekend calls and texts the weekend after he tops up. There are probably better payg deals out there if you look.

There was a great thread the other day, on how cheap some peoples phone tarrifs are.
phonetarrif
I, like many others on that have 500 texts, loads minutes, unlimted internet, for £10, with Tesco.
Some have that for £7.50

Change your provider, for starters !!

Or PAYG. And when they go over, don't pay again. They will learn the hard way.
If you talked to him last month, after the £40 scenario, and he has done it again, even worse this month. Then what you are saying, is not working, is it? FACT.
You have to thus, do something else.

I'm with tmobile and I have a cap for Internet usage. Ask them to change you to a plan where it can be capped.

Lookingforsleep - they have thousands, if not millions of users. You want them to contact each person individually to say "you've gone over the paid for mins?"
They are a business. They make extra money from the people who do go over, but they also give people numerous ways to monitor their own usage and as adults, we should be doing that. They are not thieving bastards because you shouldn't have let the bills build up for 3 months!

Do people not monitor their direct debits every month? To the OP, if she had an unexpected bill of £80 last month, she really should have made sure she checked exactly how much was going to be coming out this month before the day before the direct debit was due. That's why they send bills (or warn you they are available online to view before they are taken).

No one else is to blame.

All the people saying an 11 year old shouldn't have an uncapped contract- I don't really get that.

My DCs have had contract phones since they were 11. It worked out a better deal as we are all on the same network.

They have never, in 4 years gone over their minutes, texts or data. They know what day of the month it restarts, they know how to check either by text or phone how much they have left and they also understand that if they do go over, I will take the phone away. I have made that quite clear.

Ds2 will also have a contract phone next year and I fully expect him to manage it in the same way.

My DD(14)/DH/I all have capped contracts (same as Oblomovs!). There is not much danger of DH or I going over, but DD.....

DS(12) has an uncapped contract, but he has an app on his phone to check usage and so far (9mths), so good. I will get him a capped one next time as it's something less to worry about!

What sort of phone is it ? dd has a payg but we blocked internet access apart from home wifi when it was set up. Your ds must have known he'd gone well over his contract minutes

Brandybuck they could easily,do that, by setting up automated texts. I frequently get texts about data plans whatever, they haven't sat and done it individually.

I think it's a really difficult situation, if your son had LDs I can totally see why you want to be in contact. My ds did the same thing one month and ran up over £150- he was horrified, and spent a good bit of time trying to get a refund, but of course nothing going.

I'd be inclined to go PAYG too, after a good nice chat about how phones make money for the providers. I hope you manage to make it work food wise.

Springy Thats great advice

But why would you expect a refund? The service was used. it isn't the companies fault. We have to take responsibility for ourselves.

The company doesn't need to notify us. Get into the habit of regularly checking the balance or checking online.

I think phone companies need to set up teenage accounts that can be run by parents. Allow them to set it so only certain numbers can be called or texted. That way the money gets spent on the important calls and texts (and a cap on internet)
Like a teenage version of the children's phone that has a couple of buttons)

No wonder there are so many entitled brats out there. If you use up your credit in a day it is a lesson learnt. How do these teenagers learn to budget if mummy just bails you out each time?

Why didn't you get him a basic pay as you go phone? Mine is pay as you go and no internet usage really (very basic - I never use it), they do still exist.

I have a pay as you go from asda it was £1o and when you top it up it gives you unlimited texts and a ridiculous amount of free minutes to all virgin mobiles and landlines its very cheap and crappy but does me!

Mt dd is on tesco. £7.50 a month. 500 minutes, 5000 texts and 1m of data. They cap it so she cannot go more than £2.50 over.

I agree that the phone companies are very disingenuous to say they can't cap. They must make most of their money in these situations

But really your son is to blame. As this is a second offence I'd come down on him like a ton of bricks. Does he have savings?

My ds2 is on a contract with Virgin and its only £5 a month with unlimited texts...........

I heard t-mobile has an app that warns when you reach limits on a contract.