Teen's texting costs parents $4,756

I saw this story in the news last night. My first reaction was, this is NOT just the fault of this girl, her parents and school are also just as guilty. No child can text 10,000+ messages in a month and no one know what was going on unless they were completely ignoring that child. She averaged about 700+ text a day, which meant that she was texting while in class.

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iberlingirl wrote:I saw this story in the news last night. My first reaction was, this is NOT just the fault of this girl, her parents and school are also just as guilty. No child can text 10,000+ messages in a month and no one know what was going on unless they were completely ignoring that child. She averaged about 700+ text a day, which meant that she was texting while in class.

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It really wouldn't be that hard to get 700+ texts per day. Think of it this way, when you forward a joke email to your entire email address book, that could easily be 50+ people. You can do the same thing with text messages and your address book in your phone.

How can people (the parents here) in this day and age not know texting is or is not included in their package and cost extra if you don't buy the add on package.

I think a better question is why texting costs any money at all... I'm no expert, but it would seem that a text message would consume less bandwidth than an actual voice call...

Pez wrote:I think a better question is why texting costs any money at all... I'm no expert, but it would seem that a text message would consume less bandwidth than an actual voice call...

I don't believe it displaces any bandwidth that voice calls use.... AFIAK texts are sent on sub channels. SMS was never created to be what it has become. The telecoms are making a mint off of spare signaling channels that previously were only used to handle call control (start, end, hop towers, etc.).

Pez wrote:I think a better question is why texting costs any money at all... I'm no expert, but it would seem that a text message would consume less bandwidth than an actual voice call...

Exactly what I have been saying...

I can't fault the parents because we had a similar incident years ago when Centennial's big thing was the "all incoming calls are free" thing. A rep at one of their stores reiterated that but failed to tell us that applies only in the designated network area. When one of my kids was out of state for a week, we wanted to be sure we would call each night (as well as her friends calling) and assumed as long as she was not making any calls herself we were fine. Then I got a phone bill for $670 or so. They eventually reduced the bill after some phone calls but it was a pain.

IrishGuy wrote:

iberlingirl wrote:I saw this story in the news last night. My first reaction was, this is NOT just the fault of this girl, her parents and school are also just as guilty. No child can text 10,000+ messages in a month and no one know what was going on unless they were completely ignoring that child. She averaged about 700+ text a day, which meant that she was texting while in class.

Story Here

It really wouldn't be that hard to get 700+ texts per day. Think of it this way, when you forward a joke email to your entire email address book, that could easily be 50+ people. You can do the same thing with text messages and your address book in your phone.

Didn't realize that it counts email address/phone numbers... I thought it was 1 for 1 not 1 for how many address/numbers are attached.. that does make a lot more sense.

I think a reasonable safeguard would be for cell provider to add a confirmation/acknowledgement before the texts are sent... something like "hey dumbass, you know this joke is going to cost you $5.80 to send? That's really funny isn't it? Press Yes to continue..."

Just wanted to inform everybody that I have never sent a text message and after 3 spam texts, I had all messaging blocked on my Verizon acct.

Oh yeh, last week I allowed some broad (30ish) texting while walking at Jeff Pt to walk right into me. She said excuse me (not sorry) afterwards, I felt like grabbing her phone and throwing it.

I sent some of my first (and only) texts during Hurricane Ike. Some people's cells weren't working, but the text function was. I sent someone information on the bus schedules, and it took me twenty minutes to text! (I don't have a Blackberry or other phone with unique keys for each letter.)

Most phones have email addresses... verizon is <10digitnumber>@vtext.com