Posted on 04/09/2009 7:51:57 PM PDT by Gordon Greene
Me either. Its like a high tech version of passing notes in class to me. Its a major distraction one would think to learning in school. I also don’t get chatting in chatrooms to someone who one can simply call up on the phone itself. I think generally you can exchange information much faster in a phone conversation than having to type it all out regardless of all the abbreviations they use.
“Perhaps it’s time for parents to figure out how STUPID it is to trust a teenager on a cell phone plan. They deserve it.”
I love folks who think right (by that of course I mean, think like me).
“People used to text me all the time. I CANNOT prevent them from doing it and I still get billed even though I did nothing on my part to cause the charge.”
That’s something worth being angry about. I’ve always thought that was scum-suckingly bad... As for the girl in the story, there is no good excuse.
Any company that will offer for $10 or $20 an unlimited service, and then bill unknowing customers in the hundreds and thousands ($4,000+) should be shot.
The problem is, that you have no control over receiving texts. You can delete them without reading them, but if you read them you get charged.
So you almost have to get unlimited texting whether you want it or not just to protect yourself.
I’d rather have it as a disabled feature.
“Good thing I never had kids they would’ve hated me.”
I have three... none have cell-phones. Kids hate you when they don’t respect you. Kids don’t respect you when they can run over you.
My kids love me (so they say) and I love them too, but we’re strange... no phones, no tv or computer in the room, access on one computer to only the sites we allow and no television (or commercials) we don’t approve of.
I know it’s like living in the caveman days but, hey!
Educators try to crack down on it because of the cheating angle. I know of one situation where a student got a 0 on her midterm by the school because she was caught with a cell phone in class the day of the exam.
They read her the riot act, and then asked if she wanted to tell her parents about it or if she wanted them to. Those were her choices.
What the daughter doesn’t realize now is that four thousand dollar phone bill will be brought up at family gatherings and in front of every potential suitor for the rest of her life. Her dad is going to get his money’s worth out of that bill and smashed phone.
That is just a bit under a month of my pay...I would have to kill her. /sarc. To be honest, I would have to take it from her college fund and replace it when I could. She would also pay off what can be done.
“I’d rather have it as a disabled feature.”
I agree completely. It would help, but this kid knew what she was doing. The school knew what she was doing. The parents were blindsided, so the kid deserved harsh punishment and the teachers deserve to be fired. She couldn’t have been the only kid doing it.
I have an AT&T cell phone, and they make all activities, up to three days ago, available to the account owner on a Web page. I just went there to check, and indeed it says:
Current usage displayed as of:
04/09/2009, 08:20 PM.
The summary may not include usage within the last 72 hours.
This way a parent can always keep an eye on what's happening. Not that it matters in my case, it's my phone and I have texting and Web disabled on it from day 0.
The Christoffersens should not be letting their daughter take the phone to school.
There's no reason in the world for a student to have a phone in school. If there's an emergency, the parents can call the front office and have the message passed on. And there's no emergency that requires the immediate notification of the child to the point of them needing to have a cell phone on their person. Children have no legal authority to make decisions, and if it's enough of an emergency that their immediate presence is required, they can be pulled from class and be waiting in the office, while the responsible adult is on their way to the school to pick them up.
Yes, but there was no texting in the family plan. Don’t you think it’s the company’s responsibility to to let the bill payer know there are charges that are not suppose to be there?
“I love folks who think right (by that of course I mean, think like me).”
Yea - I had a coworker move into town with a high-school aged daughter...and a cell phone (to call friends from the old city). Not good - there is no way to impress upon a high school aged girl (that goes to a public school) the potential cost of using a cell phone with an open-ended plan.
Just not possible.
Worked for a major phone company for many years (GTE), slight of hand is their stock in trade. Most folks won’t protest their phone bill, and that is what they survive on.
I scrutinize my phone bill to the max, and protest any true or perceived discretion in my bill. If you protest long enough, your bill will suddenly become true and will remain so.
Verizon can't be trusted on this issue. I've told them repeatedly to disable texting and internet on my account. After getting a couple of texts again, they claim that texting was disabled on one phone, but not the other. I told them again. We'll see how long before I get another text.
All unregulated monopolies (actual or functional).
Is that just for cell phones or for regular phones (landlines) as well?
“The Christoffersens should not be letting their daughter take the phone to school.”
Of course not...but it seems a lot of today’s parents cannot seem to figure this out.
“Of course not...but it seems a lot of today’s parents cannot seem to figure this out.”
That and the ever-so-popular, ‘Nothing is my baby’s fault’ syndrome.
I vote for what her dad already did, PLUS what you suggest. Of course I probably would not have given her a phone at 13, but if I had, ALL charges and their limits would have been stated up front, as would the consequences for exceeding said limits.
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