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!

Had two phones with Tesco for my two DS and we made sure it was capped as they are always on the darn things.

To all those who say that a contract phone at that age is madness - surely it depends in the child?

My DD had a contract phone for her 11th birthday. She has never yet gone over her allowance. It costs £10/m, can't remember the allowances she has but she checks on a regular basis what she has left for the month.

Whenever it is available she makes sure she is using wifi instead of 3G, uses whatsapp/fb messenger where she can to save text usage.

Not all children are incapable of being responsible.

Does he know how to access the net over wifi rather than 3G?

Honestly, after he ran up a £40 bill on data I would have tunred it off or taken his phone off him.

They also need to be carefully educated in how much data they have and how much that mighty translate to.

Why is he even spending long periods doing this with his phgone if his phone is basically a tool to make sure he gets to school and back? Has he access to a computer at home that he can do his Marvel stuff on?

DS has a cheap £5 per month contract, and I have told him never to access the net from his phone. So he doesn't.

That should have been the hard and fast rule after the £40 overspend.

Sorry you are in this situation, though - v tough, at a hard spending time of year.

My son hadn't yet gone over his limit till he got a girlfriend, so there's time ;0)

Teach your son how to use a phone box and take the phone from him, even tough you will have to pay the contract for x number of months, he needs to be taught a lesson in responsibility. at least you will only be payin £15 a month if no one is using the phone.

What phone boxes happycrimblechuckie?

There are very few phone boxes around now, and the point of him having a phone is that he can call home if and when he needs to. Which as he has LDs may be more often than the average 11 year old.
So relying on locating a usable box isn't a good plan.

Those of with kids who have learning disabilities know that all kinds of unexpected shit can happen. It is more expensive to parent someone who has zero common sense, in my experience. I can see why he needs a phone, and I can see why you might have thought he was ready to take some responsibility for a budget. Turns out, not quite yet, not this time. Bugger. But there you (and I) go. He wont learn from the experience in a NT way, what might work will depend on his situation.

Ten days on fifty quid is tough. Can family bail you out for once?

We have no phone boxes round about us. The nearest one is miles away past our house or the opposite direction at tesco from our house! Gone are the days with 10p for the phone box to say you are on your way home.

No need to put the money in. 3 rings did the trick groovee!

Minimum calls from phone boxes are 60p which buys the first 30 mins if it's just a national call.

Not very cost effective.

I'd want to stay on the phone for the 30 mins just to get my moneys worth!

I have no issue with contract phones for children and smartphones etc. I want dd to have a phone as it makes it far easier and more convenient for organising stuff after school etc and when she is out and about on her own. My child, my choice.

I do think you should enable to cap contracts though - it should be a standard service.

But the blame has to lie with your ds. He is 11, so old enough to listen to rules and act on them.

Dd does have a contract smartphone. We pay more per month but this gives her unlimited text and data, plus many minutes. Picture messaging isn't included and she knows this and not to send them. 7 months on and she has kept to this rule.

Ds needs to help towards the cost as that way it may sink in that the rules are there for a reason.