A pickle......

[Fixerupper77]

DM took out a phone contract in her name for DB - both device and data plan. DB has now gone NC and obviously has the phone and has stopped paying the direct debit each month, and DM cannot afford to pay it.
Its a 36 month contract, and having a look online at their policy, its still a huge amount to pay upfront.

Is there any other option here?

No, and if she doesn’t pay it will affect her credit score

We are scraping the money together to help her pay it but its gonna be a loooong three years......

Unfortunately this is the risk with taking out any kind of credit agreement for someone else, there’s absolutely nothing you can do when they stop paying and the impact is entirely on whoever has taken it out.

All she/you can do is keep chasing him to pay but continue paying the bill in the meantime and accept it as a hard lesson learned unfortunately

Get the number changed so your brother can't rack up a big bill. He will still have the phone unfortunately but at least it won't cost more a month. Imagine if he started calling premium numbers.

I thought so. A hard lesson for her to learn here. Wondered if there was every a deal to be struck to pay for the device but agree a write off of the data plan.....

Thats a bloody good point!

You could also say it was lost and get it locked I think.

Unfortunately not no, because she has agreed to the terms and conditions there is no “way out” unfortunately.

We tried this a couple of years ago when my BIL lost his phone on holiday so he approached them to ask if he could pay off the phone “portion” and leave the rest as obviously he didn’t have the phone so wasn’t going to be using any of the data/minutes/texts and was told no chance.

The data is probably a relatively small amount of the cost. It costs nothing these days, you can get many Gb for well under a tenner a month.

A 3 year contract suggests a very high end phone for it to 'need' to be that long for the monthly cost to be reasonable and unfortunately your DM has contractually agreed to pay for the phone and service.

Really awful of your brother to do this to your DM. I assume there's a backstory about him either having health issues or simply being a wrong'un.

Providers will probably be unsympathetic because if they just let people off contracts they'd have unscrupulous people 'losing' ie selling their phones, pocketing the money then asking to be let off the cost of the contract they've agreed to pay.

How awful for your poor DM 😔
There must be a huge back story though, is it really worth it for you bro to go NC with his whole family over the cost of a phone?

A PP has suggested maybe reporting the phone as lost and getting it locked and getting it a replacement - if she has insurance is it worth trying this? Then maybe she could sell the replacement and pay off the debt?

Thanks - yes there is a big backstory - B is very abusive with addiction issues. Another well meaning attempt by DM to get him on the straight and narrow.

A PP has suggested maybe reporting the phone as lost and getting it locked and getting it a replacement - if she has insurance is it worth trying this? Then maybe she could sell the replacement and pay off the debt?

Christ, don’t do this! That would be insurance fraud.

She could however have the phone locked so that he can’t use it, request a new number and a new sim for the plan, which she can use in another phone (if she has a spare). That way she at least gets to use the plan.

I'm sure if you call the company and explain, they can cancel the data plan. I'm sure they can also block the phone so whilst the hand set still needs paid for, you'll set some satisfaction that he can't use it!