Red Tape Chronicles has followed up on the Developmentally disabled 18-year old Amanda Clark who ran up $10,000 in premium text messages whom we told you about last week. The text messages were part of teenage text chat services advertised in the back of her teen mags. “Hook a hottie,” they said. Sprint agreed to cut the bill in half but won’t budge further. The UK-based text message company says that since she texted “Y” in response to the message, ‘Y’ to: ’74447′ to start. 14+ textconnectusa.com Help?1-866-662-7132. Send STOP to end.100c per msg rcvd + std msg fees,” the girl should have been completely informed as to the service’s cost and the family is plumb out of luck. In all, 642 messages were received.
The cost for so-called “premium” text messages can quickly skyrocket. Cellphone companies need to also develop early-warning and fraud protection systems similar to credit card companies. Parents paying for their kids’ cellphone bill should check it more than once a month so they can catch charges before they get out of hand. Also, it might be wise to include text message services among the list of “stranger dangers” you tell your kids to stay away from.
In a related story, we told you how to partially and/or fully turn of text messages to fight text message spam.
Price for ‘premium’ text messages? $10,000 [Red Tape Chronicles]
PREVIOUSLY: “Premium Texting” By Disabled Daughter Results In $10,000 Sprint Bill
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Why is “Developmentally disabled” part of this story? Either the girl is responsible enough to have unsupervised access to a phone or not.
I have to imagine she knew what she was doing and just didn’t give a shit. If we are going to start claiming A.D.D. to get out of paying our bills the economy will crumble.
@hapless: Unless the water is boiling/near boiling, how the heck can you sustain thrid degree burns to the bone in the thigh area? I mean, unless your sitting in a pool of it, wouldn’t the temperature drop as you got up and danced around, and thus, started getting the water off of your body?
I’m just having trouble with this.
So almost all of you have no problem that its possibkle to rack up a 10,000 dollar phone bill??? I find it hard to beleive that a company expects people to pay 10,000 dollars for phone texting, it sounds like they are operating a scam where they hide the costs of what they are offering and just try to get as much money from people before they realize they are getting scammed.
A similar situation to compare to is back in the day where people got their first internet dial up account going, not realizing that if they didnt have unlimited local dialing, and they left the ol aol chat running all day, they were racking up a good sized phone bill. Usually the phone companies were good enogh to retroactively apply unlimited local calling since its obvious that people had made a mistake.
@GitEmSteveDave: umm the water WAS near boiling?? Plus how do you stand up in your car in and dance around. If you spill it on your lap wouldnt you then be sitting in a pool of it? try thinking about it more.
@GitEmSteveDave: scope out the wiki for this: [en.wikipedia.org]
Of note-worthiness:
* jury found shared liability (plaintiff was found partially at fault)
* amt was based on two days coffee profit for McDonald’s (wasn’t simply pulled out of the air)
* the super-heated coffee was so hot it fused her labia to her thigh. Ask yourself how much you’d suggest if someone offered you cash to fuse your scrotum to your thigh… Pretty horrible to contemplate, huh?
@Aladdyn: There is no way for the cell company to catch these fees as they happen, since they get bills on a monthly/bimonthly basis from the premium service. Much like Roaming, the cell company doesnt know its coming until its presented to them for payment.
That said, there should be a system in place to flag those bills so they can contact the customer immediately to discuss payments.
As for the people who claim its illegal for her to enter a contract, there are no contracts here. This is no different from that same child using a 900 number or even buying stuff in a store. If they make a PURCHASE then they have to pay (or the parents do).
Sprint can block text messages that cost money to sign up for. We have one on the account for my sister after she did something similar.
@Cogito Ergo Bibo: Doesn’t matter if the phone is in the parent’s name, the business isn’t creating a contract with the parent. A child cannot be held to a business contract, this is like legal 101 stuff. I dealt with this issue with my kid once, I told the company that they had contracted with a minor and they apoligized and gave me my money back. Then the boy and I sat down and had a talk about “free stuff” on the internet.
@Crazytree: Glad you have so much experience with disabled children. My stepdaughter has cerebral palsey. My stepson has Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder. Both are considered disabled. My stepson lives in a staffed group home.
Both of these kids know more about cellphones than I do. Both are capable of text messaging, albeit with really bad spelling.
My stepson who is 21, is under legal guardianship, so he cannot legally contract. But the cell phone companies sure want him to try!
I would NEVER put either of these kids on my wireless account. My stepson has a prepaid phone, and my stepdaughter has her own account.
Hard experiences tells me that sometimes, you don’t know what your disabled kids are capable of until you get the bill. So, I’m somewhat sympathetic to these parents, especially if they know as little about cell phones as I do.
Nevertheless… I get the feeling that Sprint did what they could, given that the premium text services were third party numbers. I do hope the parents of this girl get a little more relief.
What irritates me on my sprint phone is that you have no option to refuse a text message. Is this standard? I’d like an AIM-inspired option to say yes or no to a text message from an incoming number, and then the option to block all messages from that number.
lesson to parents, only give your kids prepaid cell phones.
@radleyas: how can they even allow one phone to be signed up 600+ times?
isn’t the point of a subscription fee to only be paid once?
If it is weekly, there should have been a max of $60 in subscription fees before the parent found out?
@girly:
I dunno. Maybe it’s like placing an order on an e-commerce site. The button will say “click only once”. What she did is sorta the equivalent of clicking a few hundred times …
I have no answers for your … just positing …
@radleyas: thx. Don’t worry, I know it doesn’t make sense to any of us!
Text messaging plain sucks. They are charging large amounts of money for short messages that fit into 1 TCP/IP packet! 1!
No reasonable person can justify these charges.
@CyberSkull:
I think you made the mistake of thinking that we’re reading about reasonable people ….
@Bunnymuffin: You cannot equate an internet purchase with a cell phone charge. Using the internet to affirmatively seek out a purchase unrelated to service is very different from using a cell phone to rack up related charges. In the internet purchase, your kid went out of his way to create an unrelated contractual obligation (one which the parent actually WOULD have been required to honor, if it had been for a necessary item; comic books or cool gadgets, not so much). To use your example, a similar transaction where a parent wouldn’t be liable would be the same, unrelated ordering of an item (comic book or cool gadget) over the phone. That isn’t what happned here.
This is more like your kid getting charged for roaming on a phone in your name. It’s a charge directly related to use of the phone; texting service (a phone service) was requested. No amount of “my kid did it, so I shouldn’t have to pay” will get you out of the responsibility to monitor use of your own phone, or one in your name.
Cell phone providers will usually gladly “blacklist” premium content providers… after you’ve already racked up hundreds of dollars worth of charges. This should be an opt-in service offered at the point of sale, especially when the salesperson knows it’s going to be for children.
Conversely, a little time spent explaining to your children that these services are verbotten for them could probably save the headache. But in this case, Sprint should seriously consider doing the right thing for the developmentally challenged child who geniunely may not have known better. Then again, I stopped expecting corporations to do the right thing a long time ago.
As an anecdote, a close friend of mine has a cousin with downs. Frannie is around 20, I think, and texts constantly to other friends from school. Frannie is functioning enough to be able to use a cell phone and order items online. She’s very crafty, as well. She knows that lifting her mom’s CC and ordering crap off the internet is wrong (like a massage chair from sharper image), and pulls the “I didn’t know” card all the time. She’s not functioning enough to live on her own, but is definitely of a high enough ability to get into tons of trouble if not properly supervised.
All that being said, she’s a very sweet person and doesn’t mean any harm by what she’s doing. She just knows what gets her out of trouble when she needs it to.
This isn’t the company’s fault. Parents/Guardians are responsible for their charges (not $$$, people) and their actions. If you have a 17 yo that runs their car into somebody’s house, you get to pay for it. If you give your kid a cell and they’re under 18, you have to pay for whatever they do with it. Not saying it’s fair or right, that’s a judgment call. However, it is according to the contract, and they’re being gracious by cutting it in half.
@trai_dep: Well, except for the part about the labia, which wasn’t the wiki article, it makes more sense now. I didn’t realize how old she was, and I also didn’t know that she held the darn cup between her knees, which explains how it could pool in a small area very quickly.
I admit my ignorance, and I thank you for pointing me to the right source.
I feel bad for the parent, but Sprint, the parent, and his daughter all share responsiblity in this. I feel like he is blaming everybody else but himself and his daughter by making excuses. First, it’s not because his daughter has a disability. I know a parent with a 4K bill. It’s cause she’s a teen. I sponsor a family cell phone plan with my sis who is in college. Do you think I trust her? I go online and check to see if she’s going over etc . When she downloaded games/music I saw this early on and told her she was paying for it and exactly how much it would cost. She stopped. When she was using her cell phone for email I signed her phone up for unlimited email and told her she had to pay for it. Each time I prevented a bigger problem and let her know she would pay for anything she did above and beyond our phone deal. And it worked. I hate to say it but to teach your daughter a lesson, she’ll need to get a summer job and pay off this bill. She signed up for those services. Had she been under 18 you’d have a case, but I don’t think you do here. Sorry.
Just to respond to some comments, the 642 messages were about $1300 and only part of the $10,000 worth of messages. That was just an example of one company where each message was $1.99. She received probably closer to 5000 messages to rack up that kind of bill and that doesn’t include the non-fee regular portion of their unlimited texting so add maybe 500-1000 additional free texts. Okay, I consider my sis in college to be a rabid texter (texting while in class, driving (!), and everywhere else). She only texts about 1000 messages a month. If his daughter is in college he might not notice, but if she was at home, how did he not notice such an increase in texting? She’d have been texting all day and night. Her phone must’ve been beeping or vibrating like it was possessed.
Hmm–sorry if I am double posting (can’t see my response post) but to answer the question on the 642 messages–that equated to only $1300 of the $10,000 bill. Each message was 1.99. Overall to rack up to 10K she had closer to 5000 messages in a month and because they were on an unlimited text plan, she probably had 500-1000 additional no fee text messages. If she was in college, I can understand why the parent didn’t notice, but if she lives at home, her phone must’ve been beeping and vibrating like it was possessed. Didn’t her dad notice how much her phone was going off?
@hapless: The coffee was not above the industry standard, and McDs was not required to make the coffee any cooler. The burns were not down to the bone…you could boil water (which would be hotter than the coffee she was served) and spill a cup directly on your bare thigh and not expose your femur. For someone who “hates” seeing this anecdote thrown around, you sure don’t seem to know anything about it. Or physics.