yeap you're fucked. you can't beat the wireless companies.

 

You need to kick your sons ass!

 

No need to whoop ass. A simple "son you owe me $3000" is good enough. And that's what's happening. I don't think the kid will ever "forget" what's unlimited and what's not.

 

tell your son to use Yahoo Messenger to talk to his GF...i'm in LA and my GF is in NYC so we use messenger to speak to each other before my Night & Weekend minutes kick in. all you need is a PC mic and speakers or earphones.

 

it costs 10-20 to add a person to the family plan, why not get her a cheap phone for m2m to avoid this in the future.

 

Not really. Then you'd have people pissed who had their service "interrupted" due to "unusual activity" then you'd have to add CSRs to handle people complaining about the system that questioned their usage, blocked their outgoing calls.

My suggestion in future would be to establish a credit limit on the son's account. Once the bill reached $200, service was interrupted until a payment was made. That's how our SprintPCS account is set up.

 

Well, I got into this late, but there were some solid suggestions:
social or anti-social, 10 hrs a day is unhealthy and you should not rely on only HER parents to reinforce that!
Secondly, 1 hour a day might be too extreme a solution, so maybe getting her an extra line on his account may be a better solution (though a bit stalker-i-wanna-know-where-u-are-at-all-times-ish)
Thirdly add an account limit to your son's account, and fourth, get your whole family with the same carrier for some sort of discount.
Fourth, don't ever allow your son to have it so cushy (3.0 gpa or no) that he FORGETS the cost/value of things. He's not 9, he's NINETEEN.

 

there nothing i know you can do other than...tell your kid to pay the bill himself and good luck. he should have thought it out, he is a college student after all. 3k dollar bill is completley outrageous, and cingular definently won't give you any sort of compassion because they are entitled to there 3k. his fault, make him pay, he's 18...you shouldn't have worry about his cell phone bill. if you want to be great parents, then pay the bill and make him pay you back within one year....

 

My suggestion would be to have them try skype if both parties have a computer and internet connection...

 

Either that or use teamspeak. There are hundreds of free servers that you can use.

http://www.goteamspeak.com/downloads.php

 

buy them two macs, and have them use iChat AV

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/ichat/

 

Um, I'm really, really, really surprised that nobody has mentioned this...

That girlfriend of his is the one who made him call her in the first place, so SHE SHOULD HAVE TO PAY FOR HALF OF THAT DAMN BILL!!!

If I were you, I would call her parents, tell them what happened, that she was going behind their backs to talk to your son and he ran up a $3000 phone bill as a result, and that you expect her to pay you $1500 by the end of the summer.


NO REASON she should get off scot-free with this. It takes two to have a ten hour/day phone conversation. Your son shouldn't have to work his ass off this summer to pay off a debt that is NOT entirely his fault.

 

^^^Yeah but she didn't put a gun to his head or threaten to break up with him if they didnt talk 10 hrs a day as far as I know. It's his responsibility to know how many minutes he used and what the cost of going over is. When I call people I don't worry about thinking "I hope they havent used up all their minutes this month." It's not my prob, and it shouldn't be hers either

 

i pay about $60/month (CDN) for unlimited minutes. i guess i should keep my plan as long as i can

 

People are goin crazy cuz of overages, thats why T-Mobile is trying out a new Thing, its currently being tested, in which when you reach your peak minutes limit, your phone will not work until you go and buy T-mobile Prepaid cards, its a cool little idea.

 

Or the can copy off Sprint and not charge so much for overages.

What kind of person wants their phone to shut off.....?

Will the phone come back on for your unlimited off-peak?

 

I dont have too many details yet, just know its under testing right now, Lots of kids that get phones and go over its a great plan for. Lots of parents buy prepaid phones and pay high money because they are on prepaid, but on prepaid they can control costs and there kids wont give them a bill, this is like a way for parents to control there kids minutes. I know tons of kids that go over first month and get there cell phone taken away.

 

Hey ken here is what I was talking about

http://howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=672757

Basically anyone can get on the service, with no problems, they are kinda competing with the GO Phone plan, but this is a real plan

 

But if she's worth anything, don't you think she should offer to help, or know that cell minutes aren't free?

 

i know im jumping in kind of late but you shouldve threatend to cancel after paying, they would have worked something with you then.

Happened with us and AOL we paid hourly and i was on for 40 some odd hours and the bill came out to around 500 and they dropped it made us pay a little as long as we stayed with them under there unlimited contract (i cant remeber exact numbers)

 

She wasn't calling HIM... he was calling HER, because SHE wasn't allowed to call him anymore! And no, she didn't hold a gun to his head, but she probably used every trick in the Female Dictionary of Tricks to get him to call her.... "Oh I'm soooo sad when I dont' talk to you" and "If you talk to me thiiiiiiis much maybe you'll get some nookie" or whatever worked for her. She wasn't just ACCEPTING his calls, she was actively participating and helping to ensure that they talked throughout their entire waking lives. Most guys don't like to talk on the phone that much without SOME sort of incentive.

Trust me, I've been in LD relationships in college, I know what it's like. She is just as responsible as he is. Even if it's nothing more than getting in trouble because she was going behind her parents' backs and talking to him anyway, she should at least have to pay that price. Her parents didn't want her talking to him OTP for ten hours per day for a REASON, and they happen to be the ones paying for her education, so she should either respect their wishes or pay the piper.