Texting Plan

I wonder how many parents have opened their wireless bill to find it being in the thousands of dollars. I know of one family right off the bat. Our good friends received a $4,000 phone bill shortly after their 15-year-old son got his cell phone.

Fast forward 3 years to our family. If it weren't for the "unlimited text" plan we would have received a similar bill. Between March 29 and April 29 Cameron Adam sent and received 8,441 texts. I had to call Verizon to make sure this was accurate. The representative assured me that the information is not only correct, but he also walked me through navigating the Verizon website. He took me straight to the page that shows me exactly when texts were sent and received and also who they were to and from. The kind representative also showed me where the tools are for setting phone controls. He was such a nice young man. Customer service phone etiquette dictates that when a customer and the Customer Service Representative are ending their call, the CSR is to say, "Is there anything else I can do to assist you?" "Oh no young man, you have been very helpful to me and I truly appreciate the time you took to teach me how to navigate your website and the useful information you taught me." Click.

Cameron and I had a talk this evening. He tried to convince me not to be alarmed since it is all under the unlimited plan and did not cost any additional money. I didn't buy it. As a matter of fact I told him that I had FIFTY some-odd pages of data that itemizes every single transaction on his phone... including all of the free messages sent and received during the school day.

I then told him that I will continue to monitor his activity, and if it continues he is going to get a surprise one day when his phone will not work Monday through Friday between 7am & 4pm. He tried to dispute this, but I yelled "SURPRISE!" at him. He tried to say something else and I yelled, "SURPRISE!" and walked away.

Oh, and when I was walking away I was thinking to myself, "I am so grateful that this technology was not available when I was a teenager!"