Kids & Cell Phones

Every month when that cell phone bill is due, I regret adding cell phones for the kids onto our plan. I like being able to get hold of them whenever I need them. I like knowing where my teenager is at any given time. I sometimes wonder how did WE get by as kids without them ourselves? Did my parents worry constantly while I was out on a date, wondering if I was where I said I'd be or if I was ok? However, I HATE that expensive phone bill every month. Maybe we should've had an extra trac phone instead for a kid to take with them when they went out - a pay as you go thing? A "gophone" for when they go (and do they really need a cell phone when they are home to talk to their friends on when there are other methods available)?

I saw goconnect iphone app and got excited thinking it was some type of "gophone" for iphones so my teenager could have her iPhone (mom, everybody has an iPhone...yada, yada, yada) without the huge (contract) monthly expense on our phone bill. My bad. It's a real estate app for realtors.

Got my hopes up for a minute there that there was some way to reduce our monthly phone bill. When our contract is up, things are going to have to change. It's just too expensive having five cell phones on a contract plan every month.

Do your kids have cell phones? Do you regret giving them a cell phone or do you prefer they have one?

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Uploaded Photos Online from Smart Phones Dangerous!! Here's why.

For iPhone users, it is easy to turn it off so it stops uploading your location with your picture.
For iPhone: settings, general, location services, camera. Turn it off.  I'd imagine most smartphones would be similar to turn this setting off.  Make sure you turn it off on your kids' phones too!

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Boys Will Be Boys

I walked outside a little while ago in our backyard to get a better cell signal because out in the boonies, it’s hard to find good reception sometimes, and my son was in the backyard trying to get his dog inside and doing the pee pee dance. Apparently he had to go to the bathroom but was getting his dog first. Did I mention for all of the neighbors to see? Did I mention it was daylight?


I don’t think boys really care all that much, do they, about appearances? At least he didn’t do it in the bushes I guess.

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Do you check cell phone messages?

I just checked my daughter's cell phone messages (yes, I keep track of who is texting what because I don't think a 13-year-old has any business having unsupervised texting with the potential for problems).  I figure if any of my kids don't like, they don't HAVE to have a cell phone.  They actually don't care (yet).  I'm sure the time will come when they will.  Does anybody else do that?

My daughter and stepdaughter actually texted each other about dresses this past week.  That was nice to see.  I wrote before about how my stepdaughter texted me for four hours last week and had been texting her dad more too.  Apparently, she's either missing us all a lot or something is up at home that she's not saying.  My stepdaughter told my daughter that she had sent "mom and dad pics of her dress."  She was talking about her prom dress.  That's about the only time I see her refer to me as "mom" anymore.  I was glad to see contact between them.  I've been a bit worried about my stepdaughter because of the weight loss.  I really hope that it's not an eating disorder or that she's not taking diet supplements or anything like that to make her lose that weight.

She sounded genuinely happy about seeing us next month.  It'd be nice to get them here for a few weeks this summer too assuming their mom doesn't schedule them for something every week of the summer like last summer.   

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Don't Buy Palm - BUYER BEWARE

We bought two brand new Palm smartphones on our cell plan, one for me and one for my husband around March of this year. I have the Treo and my husband has the Centro. They have been problems for months.

Let's take my husband's Treo...

Last month, it stopped working entirely. It was stuck on the Palm logo page and that was all it would do. Couldn't phone anybody, couldn't text, couldn't get into the schedule - nothing! I went through with Sprint and Palm all the soft and hard resets that you have to try first. It didn't work.

Then they want you to do one of two things:

1. They will send you another phone out with a $300 hold on one of your credit cards (it would've been our bank card which means they'd hold $300 of our checking account money) until they receive the broken phone back; or
2. Send your phone in, they promise to fix it within 5-7 days of receiving it and will send it back to you.

We went with option #2 because who the heck has an extra $300 to give a company to hold onto for who the heck knows how long when you are supporting six kids? We sent them the phone according to their instructions and waited. And waited. And waited.

I called them because it'd been longer than the 5-7 days they'd claimed. They apologized and said they'd take care of it within 24-48 hours and send the phone back to us. We finally got the phone back to find that they didn't fix the one we had sent them. They sent us a refurbished phone back. We bought a brand new phone from them a few months ago and they send us back somebody else's repaired phone? Hm.

So, it should be all good now right? WRONG! The dang phone they sent us didn't work. We could barely hear who was talking...seems the ear piece was bad. So they sent us a bad phone after waiting weeks for them to fix the phone to begin with! Nice.

*sigh*

So I call them back and they'll fix the phone. They think they are being considerate in agreeing to waive the $25 fee to fix this phone. Huh? They sent us a broken phone so why the heck should I pay them to to fix it or be grateful to them for waiving that fee?

THEN....wait for this...

They want us to send that phone back into them and wait weeks to have this one fixed or replaced. Again? Do they not realize that we bought a new phone from them just a few months ago, that we'd waited weeks already for them to fix it, longer than they said it would take, and they sent us back a bad phone? I tell them that isn't agreeable, for us to be inconvenienced for their mistake.

They tell me that they will send us another phone but will have to hold $300 of our money until we get the phone from them and then send ours back to them. What? This is THEIR mistake remember? I am livid at this point and ask to talk to a supervisor.

I get the supervisor who won't budge so they send me to corporate. They won't budge either. Why should I let them hold $300 of my own money for THEIR mistake? I basically tell them where they can put their Palm phones. They keep their patronizing tone on the phone with me while I hear some man laughing his backside off in the background at Palm. GREAT customer service!

I will NEVER buy a Palm phone from them again. Never. It'll be a cold day and pigs will fly before that happens. They have horrible customer service - sending us a bad phone and then refusing to fix it without totally inconveniencing us. What kind of customer service is that?

BUYER BEWARE! Their customer service was terrible to deal with and their products break down. After this happened, I went online and it seems like this "freezing up" like my husband's phone did is a big problem with the Palm phones. You'd think they'd have a better customer service response than the one they had with me.

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