Sons and girlfriends

[Boris]

To hell with mobiles - give him a quid and tell him to go find a phone box. See how long the relationship last then!

Spoken like a true Scotsman. Actually I would tell him to reverse the charges

[GOG 007]

Been there paid that
Only ours was a bit more
Pay as you go
is the way to go

Me too and please don't ask but it ran into four figures, whose the mug ? she now has her own contract and is gradually paying it back to Dad, young love remember that ?, quick snog behind the bike sheds at skool and no mobiles or Facebook to distract from homework ! Interesting few years ahead

[ian porter]

seems like the thing that lurks in one of our bedrooms is a normal teenager from all this, maybe there's hope for her yet

[AlanH]

One call to lover girl (who we have never met) was £70 FFS.

Just for one call? He could bought himself a reasonable sheep for that!

[Whealie]

Just for one call? He could bought himself a reasonable sheep for that!

He got an unreasonable mother instead.

[pale rider]

It's lucky that you've got a calm disposition chris, £477 is a lot of money

but for some parents there'd be the extra cost of having the phone surgically removed from the teenager when they found out about the bill

[alpslapper]

my solution with the phone was to put her on a T-Mobile fixed contract, if she uses her contract allocation of talk time and texts the phone stops working and essentially becomes a pay as you go phone for the rest of the month.

I pay £15 a month and she pays the rest IF she needs it

DITTO. I pay 15 a month for daughter number 1's phone which includes unlimited texts (Which when you read the small print is actually 3001 texts or something like that in a 30 day period) and 300 minutes of call time. They very helpfully capped the 300 minutes so she cant go over them and incur additional charges on her poor dads bank account!!!!!!

This arrangement was reached after a partiuclarly frough weekend when she ran out of credit on her phone, used up all her credit on her sisters phone, then used up all my credit on my phone, then ran up a humungus landline bill, and finally, took her bank card and withdrew £40 cash and lobbed it on her mobile on the monday morning.

It's worked out pretty good in fact. She appears to be staying within the limits ...... so far .....

[alanvendy]

My boy (14) was a great kid. Almost a bit over-enthusiastic for the healthy lifestyle, coming home and working out and insisting on healthy salads.

Then sometime this year, he got a girlfriend.

He now lies on his bed talking to her on the phone. We tried to stop him.

Tonight I went online to see how many of his minutes he had spent.

He has, so far, overspent his contract by £477 plus VAT.

I was having a calm and peaceful word with him when his mum, the good lady wife, came home.

The United Nations, in their blue hats an blue bullet-proof vests, are currently holding the pair them apart.

My full range of diplomacy skills are now required

i wish i had seen this before my youngest's testosterone went on overdrive along with his contract bill. twice @ £400+.
they never mentioned this in the parent manuals and i never saw it coming.
he's now payg.
and i'm skint.

[doglegdon]

We don't have that sort of thing here, thankfully, ours have to ask for prepaid load, for texting purposes only, every couple of days. Local landline calls are free, long distance is expensive though. My beloved "dragon", checks the phone bills with a fine tooth-comb too, no one steps out of line here, telephonically speaking!

[datsun fan]

Chris, She probably only lives just round the corner,

you know me, like Len, we like to make our own stuff -

can't you rustle up a couple of tin cans and a ball of string??!!