Full Feed13 year old girl racks up $5000 phone bill for 20,000 texts in a month
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Everyone knows that teens love to text, but sometimes it gets way out of control. Especially when your parents open a $5000 cell phone bill. This is the case with 13 year old Dena Christoffersen of Cheyenne, Wyoming who is responsible for sending and receiving over 20,000 text messages in one month. She averaged 700 texts per day, which I’m not even sure is humanly possible. After receiving the bill, her father took a hammer to the phone (I already like this guy) and was grounded to the end of the school year.
In order to help her parents out, the entertainment service provider Predicto has offered to foot the entire bill on their behalf. In exchange for the company’s generosity, Dena has to write an essay on the importance of taking responsibility for your mobile phone habits and what she has learned from the experience. Predicto is going to post the essay on its blog as a warning to both teens and parents about how much out of control texting can cost you. Hopefully, parents will realize the need to better monitor their teen’s phone usage and teens will appreciate that overboard texting comes at a high price.
Read: [Denver Post]
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*Whoah* That is one hell of Cellphone junkie. Just imagine your self like that. It looks like that she only lives a seconds to breath then she goes back to sending messages. You know she might get a World record for this. She is just like a super Spamming human.
Who could she be messaging that much in just a month. Is it that hard to content your self by using a Voip or messaging through the internet.
on April 15, 2009 at 01:50 AM - LINKAny parent who lets their kid text that often (basically not even taking the time to look up during the day) shouldn’t be surprised when they get a bill like this. Plus, ever heard of unlimited texting plans. $20 buddy.
Amazes me how bad some parents are and how ridiculously addicted some kids can get to certain things.
on April 15, 2009 at 02:59 PM - LINKOk so i cant really say anything about the amount of texts that she has sent in one month… becauase i am currently only about 5000 texts behind her.. BUT i am smart enough to make sure that I have an unlimited plan and I also pay my own bill!
on April 15, 2009 at 02:59 PM - LINKwhat i’d like to know is where were these “responsible” parents all month while their daughter was texting this crazy amount all month?? did they not notice her phone glued to her hand until they got the bill?
on April 15, 2009 at 03:01 PM - LINKHaven’t these people ever heard of an unlimted texting plan? Mine costa $5 a month.
on April 15, 2009 at 03:05 PM - LINKReading the article cleared things up a bit—the texting was happening during school, so that’s why the parents didn’t notice (the teachers, however…) and the parents thought texting had been disabled, so unless they were checking their bill online they wouldn’t have known.
on April 15, 2009 at 03:08 PM - LINKWhat about the other people she was texting?
on April 15, 2009 at 03:15 PM - LINKTheir bills must have been pretty high too, don’t you think?
It shouldn’t matter if she has unlimited texts or not. The kid is 13. And she shouldn’t have unfettered access to a cellphone. She should only be allowed a cellphone when going to the mall, or somewhere that phones are harder to access. Schools have phones that children can use to call parents so there is no need for her to bring her phone to school.
on April 15, 2009 at 03:29 PM - LINKwhat, she did not put the phone down one second? the staggering bill could have been avoided by getting an unlimited plan though. geez!
and it would be nice if phone companies don’t charge us for incoming text, they’re totally out of the subscriber’s control if they receive text messages, why should we pay for them?
on April 15, 2009 at 03:29 PM - LINKThank Goodness, we have unlimited texting.
on April 15, 2009 at 03:39 PM - LINKHOLY CRAP! This is unbelievable…
on April 15, 2009 at 03:42 PM - LINKThe problem is very simple. 20.000 divided by 30 equals 666. Her cell phone is possessed by the devil.
on April 15, 2009 at 03:50 PM - LINKDon’t they know that there are unlimited text contracts?
on April 15, 2009 at 03:53 PM - LINKAt some point, even unlimited texting says enough is enough. I had a friend that sent over 10000 and his wireless company at the time started charging him again. And this was no small backwoods company either.
Point is that she should not have a cell phone since she is obviously not mature enough to know the consequences of her extreme usage of it. And her father should not have destroyed her phone, because that shows her more bad behavior (trash the phone, get a new one).
on April 15, 2009 at 03:56 PM - LINKHaha I cant rack up that high of a phone bill even if i tried!! It’s impossible!! I have unlimited everything from cricKet so its impossible to get that high. The service is great and it only costs about $50/month with no contract. And I do the same thing as Dena… 700 texts a day!!!
on April 15, 2009 at 04:11 PM - LINKTexting should be free, it doesn’t cost the network anything, as long as she’s not getting up to mischief or speaking to people she shouldn’t be speaking to then why the hell not. Charging for text messages is a rip off and should be banned.
on April 15, 2009 at 04:14 PM - LINKI am more amazed at the fact that she sent 700+ messages per month with a phone that didn’t even have a QWERTY keypad!!! Unbelievable!!!
Unless that picture up there isn’t of the hammered phone of course
on April 15, 2009 at 04:17 PM - LINKTelephone companies obviously charge too much for texting….
It does not cost them anything to send and receive texts
on April 15, 2009 at 04:27 PM - LINKIf she is a straight A student then cut her some slack, but if she is one of those type of teenagers who seams to know it all (she probably still learning to wipe her bottom) then she should write a 10,000 word essay since she’s so smart.
Now if her parents want for her to have a phone, they do sell a phone that only dials a few numbers like in an emergency 911, and a couple of other numbers like Home and the grand-parents and these numbers are programmed and no text messages. No can changed anything except for the person who pays the bill, now that the way to go with these out of control kids.
on April 15, 2009 at 05:53 PM - LINKBoy, and I was upset with my 13year old when she racked up $150 in charges.
on April 15, 2009 at 06:08 PM - LINKGuess I should count my blessings
BTW - she now has unlimited texting at $15 a month for the family plan for my 4 teenagers and I have blocked the internet access for her so she cannot possibly run up the charges anymore.
I can actually see this being possible! The most i have racked up in one month of texting was 12,000 texts that month alone! I don’t know how it happened but it did. I spend more time texting then talking, I hate talking on the phone and I am not 13, I am 27yrs old. When I am at home cooking dinner, doing laundry, helping my son with his homewrk and other things, texting is the only way I can communivate with people without having to be interrupted with talking on the phone. I can respond to a text at any time….However for her to be 13 that is way too much time to spend texting. For me 12,000 is not obscene because I do not have homework to do or school to focus on, I can use my phone at wrk and I still get things done, she on the other hand…700 in one day! where was the time for homework…wow! at least her family was lucky to have the bill paid for. In this economy, a $5,000 phone bill for one month can cause a heartattack!
on April 15, 2009 at 06:59 PM - LINKThat 20,000 number is totally within possibility if she mass text most of the day in school. You don’t hear about this happening to the other parties within the text party because they are subscribed to unlimited text plan.
on April 15, 2009 at 07:03 PM - LINKfyi that is humanly possible for sure. i text probably twice as much, its not that hard.. like a minute to send a text then 30 secs to receive. i think it’s rediculous that the girl wasnt aware of the outcome unless she was but didnt take it seriously.. and the parent was bad indeed also. it’s only $20 a month compared to 5k.. but she does NOT deserve anything as such lol.
on April 15, 2009 at 07:31 PM - LINKThat averages out to 1 text ever 30 seconds of the ENTIRE DAY - ALL 24 HOURS OF IT. WTF!?
on April 15, 2009 at 08:24 PM - LINKThis is garbage - 700 texts on average a day would mean that if she was awake for 18hours a day (unlikely) she would need to be sending a text every 90 seconds, the entire month. Sorry, but that’s impossible. I guarantee what has happened is she subscribed to ringtone clubs and made lots of calls during the month. No doubt she texted like mad, but these figures are utterly bogus. My bet is that ‘Predicto’ is responsible for giving the girl access to these phone ‘scams’ in the first place and is trying to put a positive spin on this whole event. You release these ringtone clubs cost like $10per msg!?
on April 15, 2009 at 08:47 PM - LINK