One mistake unknowingly racks up over $5K on familys cell phone bill heres how to prevent this from happening to you
She did what?It’s bad enough that the cost of living is wildly high these days.Unfortunately, to add insult to injury, one mom, who already had a costly cell phone bill, received a bill one month that was almost $5,000 higher than normal.
In this economy? Absolutely not.The disgruntled mom took to the r/personalfinance forum on Reddit to share her frustrations after learning that her daughter was the culprit.“Got my cell phone bill for $5,185 instead of the usual $385 and I could have sworn it was an error but no, I’m getting screwed and have to pay the bill,” she wrote.“My daughter met someone on Roblox and wanted to chat, so they called & talked.
She didn’t know she was making an international call and talked and talked.”To make matters worse, the mom revealed that she doesn’t “even have 5K in my savings,” so she can’t help but feel “so screwed and defeated.”For those unaware, Roblox is an online gaming platform that “allows users to program and play games created by themselves or others,” which can be tricky in itself to navigate as a parent because no one wants their youngster meeting and talking to strangers online, let alone accumulating insanely high bills because of it.Empathetic Reddit users came to her aid in the comment section, asking, “Have you called the phone company and asked if they would make a one-time exception?”Another jumped in writing, “… Also, you could put international blocks on all of your phones (unless somebody actually needs it). It’s probably a scam, [a] North American number in a different country. It’s an old one that still works.If the phone company won’t work with you contact your local news outlets, especially if they have a consumer protection feature.
Embarrassment works well.”“You can also see if they can potentially retroactively upgrade your plan to one that would have included international calling,” chimed in someone else.Scams aside, one commenter was appalled at ...