Dealing with parents and overage charges
 

Ok, here goes another semi-personal rant...

Our family has a 700 shared-minutes plan with Verizon. Browsing the web, making calls, downloading games, etc. all eat minutes up, as we don't have a data plan.

I accidentally left my phone connected to a Mobile AIM service for an entire day (during peak hours!). It refreshes the page every 5 seconds or so to check for new messages. I paniced, checked the minutes remaining by calling some automated number, and saw I wasted some 500 minutes. Ok, 500 minutes is a lot, but at least there is still 200 minutes left (phew). Nothing to worry about.

Little did I know that the minute counter only updates about every 24 hours (fine print says so), and some 150 minutes were unaccounted for! I had actually used up almost 650 minutes! Combined with the rest of the family, it came to a grand total of 790 minutes! :eek:

My dad found out, and whenever something unexpected like this happens, he doesn't always think straight. I offered to pay back the $40 in overages, with whatever money I earned from my job. But he thinks that is "too easy" and that "really didn't earn the money". I offer to pay the entire bill (~$160), but he is still ticked off and says no. Then all of a sudden he says "yeah, why don't you pay the bill back with money not from your job, as that doesn't count". WTH does that mean? What do I do? Am I just being stupid posting this here?

My honest opinion is that he's coming down hard on you. But give it a day and try again for the overage or the whole bill offer. He probably is a bit hot right now on this, so give the issue some time to cool down.

As a side note, I'm quite a number of years away from having kids your age (your in your teens I assume?) and I'd be thrilled if my kid came to me to announce that he'd driven the phone bill over its allowance but it was ok because he was going to cover it. In my mind it's exactly the lesson you'd want the kid to learn. Responsibility for their actions. The only danger or way that it would be "too easy" is if you saw it as "I can just buy my way out of any problem". The thing with this situation though is that payment is the proper solution as the direct consequence if you'd been responsible for the bill is additional payment. It's not like you tried to pay off your parents for being home after curfew.

Anyway, I hope you can work this out.

Yeah, paying the overage is a reasonable thing to do. Really see no need to pay the whole bill.

BUT, from your Dad's perspective, this is not about the money which I am sure is irrelevant to him. It's about irresponsible behavior. He wants you to act responsibly... that is, avoid making these kinds of mistakes by thinking about what you are doing and the possible consequences down the road if you don't. $40 is an easy one, future mistakes from not thinking through your actions may be much more costly and no amount of money might be enough to fix some of the consequences.

I suspect he's not really as angry as you think, he just wants to make an impression on you so that you don't make more mistakes in the future. In his view, paying the $40 from your job may not be enough get your attention. He is trying to teach you a very, very important life lesson. Pay attention to the lesson, it will serve you well in the future.

The last thing he wants to hear from you is, "Here's the $40, so what's the problem?" The first thing he wants to hear from you is that you made a mistake, followed by you accept responsibility for that mistake and will make it right AND will pay more attention to this in the future to avoid doing stupid things. It is the future behavior that concerns him.

Agree with Fracai that waiting a day will definitely make things easier. Just pay attention to the lesson he is teaching, there are many consequences for some careless behaviors that just can't be fixed. He just wants you to enter the adult world fully prepared to meet the challenges you will face... $40 bucks is a darn cheap lesson.

Maybe it's a value of a dollar perspective he's coming from. $40 towards over use is $40 not going into savings. If he thinks you see it as no big deal then maybe he's worried it could become the norm or increase from there. $40 per month is $480 per year. It's easy for these things to add up. Especially once you start getting into credit cards. It's good to get a firm financial grounding before you get started.

Maybe he is angry because he did not get to tell you what to do? Its possible. Let him decide the punishment, he is the parent. Its also possible we are only hearing one side of the story, and there is a good reason he is hot about this. I am not accusing the OP of anything, but it stands to reason there is more to this story. Such as other things that have brought this point to a head.

I agree with the advice to let the situation cool down. Consider yourself fortunate. In the spectrum of teenage misadventures, this falls on the mild end.

You didn't say "I told my dad" - how did he find out?

The way I read it (and forgive me if I am misreading the situation) is you didn't tell him immediately because you thought he wouldn't find out since there were supposedly 200 minutes left - enough to prevent overages. Which means he found out when he opened the bill. Then, when confronted, you admitted your mistake. Speaking as a parent (and as a husband who has been surprised by a bill or two) I find his his anger unsurprising.

It would have been better to inform your father ahead of time that the phone bill might be higher than normal and that you would pay the overages because you accidentally left the phone connected to an AIM service.

A teenager (you are still in your teens, correct?) thinks his father isn't thinking straight? No offense but the benefit of the doubt goes to the parent. ;)

It's good that you offered to pay the overage (I assume $40 covered the entire cost of the extra minutes, which would be fair because without your error, there wouldn't have been any extra minutes).

I don't understand what your father means by "really didn't earn the money" or "yeah, why don't you pay the bill back with money not from your job, as that doesn't count". Sometimes people are less articulate when angry (very frustrating when one is in the right but losing credibility because one sounds asinine - I think we've all been there). It sounds odd, but he still gets the benefit of the doubt. Does he have a point? How do you earn the money?

Maybe he wants you to feel as inconvenienced as he feels, in order to make you understand the consequences of your actions a little better. An extra $40 can be anything from an annoyance to a hardship, depending on the circumstances.

Yeah, I'm a teenager. I do realize my father is probably correct. Looking at the situation now, I definitely should have told my father earlier about possible overages, instead of letting him find out himself. I earn my money at a local ski resort, which also doubles as a summer resort during, well, the summer.

Anyway, I got a chance to look at the phone bill, and I think there is something is wrong with it. The new billing cycle starts on the 19th. The bill says my sister was charged tons of small overage fees from making a ton of 1 minute data calls throughout the month, most of them happening on the 19th. How could she be charged all these overages if the new month just started?

Also, the bill also says I wasn't charged any overages for my usage (?!), although I know I did use the bulk of the minutes.

Calling Verizon didn't help much. The only thing they said was that "Downloading or browsing for ringtones, games, and wallpapers may use airtime minutes". That doesn't explain how we got charged overages on the first day of the billing cycle, before our 700 minutes were used up.

Now my whole family is confused as to what is going on, and I'm being blamed for my sister's unexplained overages as well as my own. And now I have also have the responsibility of fixing this mess. Well, off to call Verizon again...

i hope verizon customer services are better than o2

As I understand it, overages are charged for the minutes after the 700 minute limit. If your marathon session occurred before that limit, the charges will be applied to somebody else. And some charges are in advance, others are not. It can be confusing, which is why I have my wife read our Verizon bill - she works there (not Verizon Wireless, though) and can make sense of it whenever I can't.

Since the bill is in not in your name, you should not be the one to call, your father should, assuming it's in his name. And he shouldn't call the local Verizon Wireless store or kiosk. Use the number on the bill - he'll be much more likely to get somebody knowledgeable.

Well, I used the online customer service chat, as the automated support system over the phone was bringing me in circles.

I can't go any further with the online customer service chat, as the customer service person isn't authorized to change the bill or give a credit refund(!). But it does seems like there probably is something wrong with the bill. So I have to talk to the "Credit Specialist" to get a possible credit refund. However that person needs to speak directly with person linked to the main number of the account, which is my father.

Well, lets see what happens next...

That's actually the problem. According to the bill, my sister got charged for overages before I wasted all the minutes. Which doesn't make sense at all.

Well, I got pretty far before I had to bring my dad into this (read above post). Mainly because I pretended to be him over the internet (is that illegal?) via a support chat. My dad wants me to fix this mess by myself, but I see that's not going to happen.

Yes, that is illegal in most (all?) democratic countries! As a parent myself, I understand that your father wants you to "clean up your own mess". However, I find it hard to believe that he would be encouraging you to pass yourself off as him in order to get that done. The point is to clean up the mess, not create an even bigger one.

I'll just have a talk with him about the situation and hope everything pans out ok... I actually don't think he wanted me to impersonate him. It seemed like the only way for me to get anywhere with customer service, as they don't seem too keen to talk to teenagers.

I feel like this topic is the exact opposite of my current situation.

I'm an 18 year old. I have an account with AT&T. I'm currently on a 550min shared plan with my mom's friend, who is around 40 years old.

On my summary at the end of the billing cycle, I always get this:

Numbers:
925-330-XXXX: 90 Minutes used (This is me.)
925-381-XXXX: 562 Minutes used (This is her.)

In this case, it's an adult being very, very unresponsible with the phone. Not only that, she uses text messages. I mean, a *ton* of text messages. Enough to cost me $20 in overages.

Thankfully my 20% discount that my employer nets me helps lessen the sting.

But even with that, my bill this month is $188.74. Which hurts when you are on a minimum wage paycheck and only 24 hours a week.

Irresponsibility knows no age limit.

It's your credit at risk. maybe you should reconsider having her on your plan.

You need to check around a little. I'm sure you can do much, much better with your own account... but depending on you age it may need to be in your Mom's name.

Last time I checked, there was one company that offered unlimited local calls for a very reasonable rate. Another offered an automatic upgrade to the next higher plan automatically when you exceed the minutes in your plan.... which is always much, much cheaper than paying the overages. Others offered carry forward minutes if you didn't use all your minutes in previous months.

I'd be talking to someone about a little fair play on this one, particularly on the text message thing which tends to be separate charge. You understand you are paying over $2 a minute for your calls, right? You need to change something... and quickly.

Well I took said action today.

I went and had the SIM card reprinted for the other phone. Rendering the one currently in use...well...useless. Now I have to wait for my bill to level off a bit.

I should mention that when I had my girlfriend on the account (we broke up, long story), my monthly bill was only $80, and that was because of activation. ($20 charge)

So my bill falls down to around $60. Actually it'll probably be around $90 because I have unlimited text messaging, but that has saved my bacon so many times it's worth the charge.

EDIT: Also, my credit is amazingly good...When I first signed up with AT&T in December 2007, I had good enough credit to get by without having to drop a deposit.

Good move, I think. But, just curious... did you check around for the best deal with several providers, or just take the first "better than what I have deal" you found? AT&T is generally competitive on the price thing.

Well. there were two deals.

Verizon (I can say I have a huge dislike for CDMA, and also, their phone lineup just plain sucked) offered 20% off the monthly bill. As does AT&T.

The reason I went with AT&T?

EXCELLENT customer service. AT&T has (so far) treated me very well.

Good phone lineup. I liked their phones a hell of a lot better than Verizon's.

Pretty good service coverage in my area. My friend on Verizon complains about their service.

$281 Bill
 

I have a shared plan with my dad's cellphone. We each have like 600 minutes I believe, and whatever is left over is added to the new month. For example right now, I have over 2000 minutes. I usually don't text that much. 10 text messages a month maybe. But this month, I got more of a text-messaging addiction. A really bad addiction. I always thought that the text messages would eat up my minutes, and since I had more than enough of that, I though it wouldn't matter. But I was way wrong..
So the cellphone bill came in yesterday.. The bill is usually around $70, but this time it was $281, about $211 more. And since a text message is $.35 (apparently), you do the math of how many text messages I sent..
My punishment was way simpler resolved. After being yelled at for half and hour, my cellphone was confiscated and I am not allowed to get out of the house for a month. Technically I am, but I would have to walk or provide my own ride, since my dad said he won't drive me. But it's impossible to walk anywhere, the closest park or cinema is 1/2 hour - 1 hour away by walking.
So that pretty much means not many girls this summer, since movies or mall was the primary way of meeting them and the cellphone was one of the only ways I kept touch with people over the summer, and this pretty much sux :)

Felix: Going to assume AT&T on that since they are the only ones I know of (At least in the 'States) that offer rollover.

Talk to your dad about the $5 text messaging plan. It's only $5 for 200 text messages. Pretty good deal. I got unlimited (Which is like $25) because I burned through 200 really quick.

EDIT: Oh nuts. MetroPCS just began offering a new service called MetroFlash where they can rig up a CDMA phone from Sprint/Verizon to work on their network.

ARGH ARGH ARGH!