to sell the xbox my son got for christmas to pay his phone bill?

[fatkatyslim]

just checked my bank account and my sons phone bill has gone out,£178!!!
phone was a gift for his birthday and i pay the £30 monthly for chores he does around the house.i phoned vodafone and they have confirmed he has been downloading games,he was given the phone on the trust that this would not happen.so,do i sell his xbox?

I don't think it's that awful to sell the Xbox. He now has £100-plus of mobile phone games to play on now, I don't see why he needs an Xbox as well. (Unless I've misunderstood and the games were somehow for the Xbox).

Else I agree wholeheartedly with selling some of his Xbox games to pay for the mobile games. That seems absolutely fair to me.

Also, I had a mobile phone from the age of 14 or 15 and remember not realising that you could pay for services, games etc via your bill. I assumed that if you weren't being asked for card details you weren't being charged. I don't think it's fair to say that OP had failed to set boundaries, it's more that her DS, being 13, has failed to grasp that mobile billing is real money. He will have learnt that now.

i had a long and thorough discussion with my ds before deciding to take out a contract for him.he agreed to be responsible and since he was given the phone for his birthday in september has always kept within his limits.
this is the first time he has gone over hence the shock and anger.

my gut reaction was to take away his pride and joy ie the xbox.obviously i didnt say this too him,i needed to calm down so i could deal with the issue properly,i came on here to see if selling it was harsh not to have my parenting pulled apart,i'm sure there are alot worse 13 year olds in the world.

thank you again for all your responses and i sincerley wish you the best of luck when your dcs become teenagers

So what are you going to do?

Hasn't she already said that she has taken away the xbox, and her son will have to earn it back by doing chores round the house, plus he's grounded for a month (I think) so hasn't been able to spend his snow day sledging with his friends?

Not nearly hard enough punishment, but she's the parent.

thats exactly right sdtg.also in that time he knows that he has to regain my trust before i will even contemplate allowing his xbox back never mind his phone.

I have to confess I didn't check before posting, so she may have applied other punishments too, MrsRigby. I didn't intend to mislead you - I thought you had missed her post where she said what she was doing. Sorry.

OP - I don't think you did anything wrong. 13yr old are a different species to the rest of us. I wouldn't take the X-Box away - if I did that my DS would go into a decline . But I would take the phone away until you had saved the amount of money that he has overspent. Can you end the contract early? After all it was overuse of the phone that caused the problem.

I'm going against the grain here but actually think a month is far too long to be grounded for and am willing to bet that sanctions will be lifted long before the month is out. Which teaches nobody any particular lesson! Instead, I would sit him down and go through the previously agreed rules again and explain why you will have financial difficulty bailing him out and why he has disappointed you in not bothering to keep his side of the bargain when after you had given him the phone. I would also say how tempted I had been to take the x-box away too.

However, I do agree that giving teenagers a contract phone is very often a quick route to disaster, DS1 (28) has had a contract phone since he was 25, DS2 (27) still can't entirely trust himself after he had a major falling out with Orange while at university. All his own fault, incidentally.

I agree that contracts are ultimately cheaper but also think that no matter how irritating the constant mithering, it's not a bad lesson to teach a 13 year old that there's a very set credit limit on his PAYG phone and that going over it will result in the phone only receiving calls. This making it possible to keep in touch. Although there's a particularly grumpy side to me that says children really don't need mobile phones at all, let alone have sophisticated devices to be downloading X-box games from.

To be fair you parenting wasnt pulled apart, you did lack in your responsibility in him when it came to the Internet access, he was able to download umpteen games and you had no acknowledgment of it, until your received the bill.

And again, yu said you discuss what the new contract entails, but did you not have this with the PAYG phone, and he still acted irresponsibly. but yet you still brought him a phone with unlimited access and Internet usage and as far as I can see you expected too much from him. Again the both of you acted irresponsibly. you cannot deny this.

I dont think your child is anyway a rogue child, just confused by the whole situation and has no sense of worth/value.

if it were me punishing the child, punishment would be, xbox earned play, and his mobile phone only given when and needed.and limited to calls and also chores.

Can I also advise that you block Internet access and get a cap put on the mobile so this instance does not happen again.
But in all honestly I think you needed to teach and show your son responsibility, worth and value as that is your parental responsibility to him.

She has already said she is getting the mobile capped LittleMrsHappy.

And I really don't think it is fair to extrapolate from this incident and the contributing one with the PAYG phone to say that the OP hasn't taught her child any values, has acted irresponsibly etc etc.

If it was me reading such a swingeing criticism of my parenting, based on so little evidence, I'd be hurt and upset.

obviously you don't know my ds littlemrshappy nor i yours.all children are different and i felt he could deal with the responsibility of a contract phone.yes he did use his credit when on payg in one day hence the unlimited txts and 600 minutes a month he had with his contract phone.

he was responsible with it for 3 months as i have already said hence my anger this morning at the size of the bill.

i will be blocking internet access completely ,this will then limit the phone to its original cost and i wont get a massive shock again.

if he ever gets it back of course

i'm not hurt or upset in the slightest sdtg ,everyone is entitled to there opinion.life would be really boring if we agreed on everything.

but do we agree that iambu to sell his xbox?

The OP came on and asked for advice and asked am I being unreasonable, well nO SHE IS NOT, BUT on the very same note, she must take responsibility herself for some of the actions.

I made my conclusion from the whole of her posts and in MY opinion both acted irresponsibly, and I do think its unfair that she blames her son for this incident completely, as to me due to what the OP has said in her posts, he clearly could not be trusted with a contract phone, when he could not be trusted with a PAYG phone.

If you come on a forum and ask for opinions, you are going to get them, whether you agree with them or not. Its not all hugs and kisses.

I think your doing the right thing FKS in your punishment, I believe taking the XBOX away completely is unnecessary.

Yes, unreasonable to sell the xbox right now but the threat of it's demise should always be there.

Can you get him microchipped? Cheaper than a phone, lol!

I am glad you are not upset, fks.

i like the microchipped idea lol.
i came on here fuming this morning but calmed down before i spoke to him.if i had reacted straight away then yes i would have acted very irresponsibly.giving a child the freedom to make mistakes is all part of life,just wish it hadn't cost me so much money but it could have been worse.

not upset at all,the litre of vodka me and ds shared at lunchtime has put smiles on both our faces lol

Now that just IS bad parenting, fks - making him share with you, and not buying him his own. Poor wee lad!

i sold his trainers to pay for it too,well he's grounded for a month so he isn't going to need them is he

My 11yo DD has a payg mobile, as she is SEN and I don't have a landline, and she 1) lives quite a way away from her friends houses and 2) has to be alone for 1/2 an hour to an hour after school while I collect the DS's from primary. ALL her friends have contract phones. She doesn't. She's NOT responsible enough for one. She has to do chores to earn her credit, she is able to earn UP TO £5 credit a week, if she earns less by not doing all her chores, it's her problem. If she has no credit, she doesn't get to go out to see her friends. For the first 3 months, she found it difficult, but since then (she's had the phone 10 months, since her 11th Birthday, 2 yrs later than her friends ), she has managed it wonderfully, does all her chores, earns her credit, almost always still has at least 30p left by the time she's due to get more, on the (very rare) occasions she runs out, she doesn't bug me for more, them's the rules and she knows it. Although she does phone to see how much credit she has after EVERY text (her SEN means she can't do the maths, but she understands that less than a pound is not much). YANBU to want to sell the xbox, YABU to actually do it, and YABU to not set clearer rules about mobile usage, he's still a child and still needs guidance. OH and DD doesn't download ANYTHING she's got to pay for as it would result in her not having enough credit to go to her friends house...that and she's tight!

Ds1 and dh have a 'helpful' suggestion each - ds1 suggests duct taping his mouth shut so he can't talk on the phone, and dh suggests cutting his hands off so he can't use the phone at all.

This may be a little more strict than even the more draconian posters would like.

Sorry I havent read the whole thread as Im and again at the £30 p.month for 600 mins and unlimited texts. You are gettin ripped right off, they really saw you coming! I pay £8 per month for the same contract with Vodafone. Never pay what they quote.