Shocked and Awed
By Mitch Berg
I got my kids cell phones for Christmas. The cheap ones, mind you – the kind you get for next to nothing at WalMart, and use the ultra-cheepo pay as you go plans. It’s mainly so I can stay in touch with ’em.
But they hit me up for the unlimited text plans.
“Unlimited?”, my taciturn Norwegian and thrifty Caledonian sides exclaimed simultaneously.
“Yeah. We text more than we talk.”
“Well”, I responded, “how about the $4 for 1000 a month plan”.
Bun rolled her eyes. “I can do a thousand in a week, Dad”.
However, I did find that by trading talk time for text messages, it made the whole deal cheaper while actually improving my main goal – having my kids reachable (it’s much cheaper to make sure they never run out of text messages than talk time) anytime, anyplace.
Although I was a little skeptical about that whole “thousand message a week” thing.
I said I was skeptical. No more.
A cell phone used by a Wyoming 13-year-old to run up a nearly $5,000 phone bill will text no more thanks to her angry father and his hammer. Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne sent or received about 20,000 text messages over about a month, and her parents’ phone plan didn’t cover texting.
Gregg Christoffersen told KUSA-TV of Denver this week that he thought texting had been disabled on her daughter’s phone, which he smashed hours after getting a phone bill for more than $4,750.
There’s good news, too:
The family said Verizon has been willing to knock the bill down to a reasonable level.
20,000 a month.
Where does she find time to breathe?
April 10th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
A woman at work had a daughter (twelve I think) who racked up close to $700 in overage charges in a month because of excessive texting.
April 10th, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Texting simply has to be the most unexpected cash cow cell phone companies never saw coming. “Wait, you mean people will actually pay to send ‘LOL’? This is simply too good to be true.”
April 10th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
A good friend of mine at work’s daughter went off to Villanova recently. The school already costs $50,300/year. Her first month there she had 3500 cell minutes and 6000 text messages. Her dad decided that was the end of that and put her on pay as you go, I believe the bill was something like $1500.
I had to wonder how she even listened to the teacher, let alone took notes, studied, ate, slept, or breathed.
April 10th, 2009 at 6:49 pm
I’ve never grasped the appeal of texting. My eyes are too weak and my thumbs too big to do it regularly myself, and I’d find the constant interruptions too annoying. I think it’s all a plot instigated by the makers of Ritaln.
April 11th, 2009 at 9:35 am
The Remaining Dependent has a TracPhone. If she wants to “text” someone, she can do it at home on the computer.
April 11th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
It’s rather surprising that kids can be so technology savy on the one hand, and yet so naive about the implications of ‘sexting’ – sending potentially very embarassing, widely distributable sexually explicit material.
For some people, texting begins to resemble an addiction.
April 11th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
As can blogging…
April 11th, 2009 at 2:33 pm
After I ragged on my daughter, she dropped from 14.5K/month down to about 8K/month. My older son doesn’t do nearly as many texts, maybe 500/month. Me? Last I looked I used 6, all of them to the kids since they’ll usually respond far more quickly to a text than a call (which is, from what I’ve been reading, typical of teens!).
For me, the texting cost isn’t too much of an issue. I got on the T-mobile plan at $10/month for unlimited texts during the introductory period. So I’ve got VoIP through them for $10/month (unlimited local, long distance, voicemail, etc), and 4 phone lines. It’s actually not too bad a bill at less than $100/month for all the phones and services. And since I’ve got a WiFi cell phone, I can use that for my work-from-home days and not burn up any minutes and keep the home phone unused.
April 11th, 2009 at 7:36 pm
Just wait until she meets the “love of her life”. The Junior Logician is going through that right now. I can easily see the 1K texts a week happening! He and the GF do nothing BUT text one another. Yes we have had the discussion about “sexting” and how he could get into huge trouble with those kinds of pics on his phone oh and his nosey mamma has made sure that there are no attachments.
We were smart – we got unlimited texting a couple of months ago. I am breathing the huge sigh of relief right now!
Cindy
April 12th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
“It’s rather surprising that kids can be so technology savy on the one hand, and yet so naive about the implications of ’sexting’”…or naive about economics, history, reasoning, logic …I once read where economics, history, reasoning, logic were supposed to be, what was the term, taught, yes, taught. Yes, I’m, I’m sure I read that once before. And those were supposed to be taught by taughters, no, that’s not the word…teachers, that’s it – teachers! And they were supposed to be taught these lessons by these people called teachers someplace called, was it schools? And weren’t these schools paid for by the parents, and others by taxes?
Well, how’s all that working BTW?