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girl texts 20,000 in 1 month....$4750 bill!

K

Keebler

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 20, 2005
2,965
249
Canada
ok. I will 100% admit I'm going to judge here.

So the parents thought that texting was disabled on their 13 year old daughter's phone. Fair enough.

But what in the heck are they doing as parents for their daughter to have that much time to send that many messages?!?! Granted, yes...some txt msgs are very short, but still...that is ridiculous.

Either she texted the entire time in school or every few second while at home and therein lies my judgement - how could she get away with this?

I have kids so that is from where my judgement comes - honestly! did they work all the time or just let her spend her time in her room?

Good on the Dad for smashing it up. That is a job well done. I would have done the same.

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/WeirdNews/2009/04/09/9072136-ap.html

I realize I may be over-reacting, but again, as a Parent with younger kids yet to reach the teen years... I question how this could happen.

cheers,
keebler
 
Sounds like a wonderful job of parenting to me. How can a parent(s) not notice that much texting activity?
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

steve2112 said:
Osarkon said:
So if you were to try texting, would it just fail when you try to send?
Click to expand...

That's what my carrier does. My carrier allows incoming texts at no charge, but if you have texting turned off, it will fail if you try to send one out. They won't even let me send one and be charged whatever the outrageous fee is now for individual texts.
Click to expand...

AT&T will block text messages as well. I had them do this before I got my iPhone.
 
Well, to be fair, it could be her primary means of communication. I just copied my AIM logs from yesterday into Pages, and there were 997 lines. Now I know some of them are multiple lines, and there were status changes and such, but even at 900 messages (sent and received) per day, 900 messages per day times 30 days per month is 27 thousand messages in a month.

Now, obviously if you're going to use something that costs money per message, you should probably use fewer, longer messages, and the parents should have made sure that texting was actually disabled, but the logistics themselves aren't really that ridiculous.
 
If I've done my math right, that's about 2.16 text messages a minute (in a month with 30 days).

60 * 24 * 30 = 43,200 minutes in 1 month
43,200 / 20,000 = 2.16 text messages a minute
 
themoonisdown09 said:
If I've done my math right, that's about 2.16 text messages a minute (in a month with 30 days).

60 * 24 * 30 = 43,200 minutes in 1 month
43,200 / 20,000 = 2.16 text messages a minute
Click to expand...

You should take out 8 hours a day for sleeping and other time she can't text.
It'd work out near 3.5 per minute she's awake??

EDIT:Or have I got that wrong, I've just woken up?
 
dejo said:
Why did the Canoe state 20,000 when in fact it was only 10,000?

Originally Posted by original story from 9News
In one month, a Cheyenne teenager sent 10,000 text messages and received about the same - all while her family's plan did not include texting.
Click to expand...

She sent AND received a total of about 20,000. It says right in your quotation that she sent 10K AND received about the same. Both incoming and outgoing message are billed.

themoonisdown09 said:
If I've done my math right, that's about 2.16 text messages a minute (in a month with 30 days).

60 * 24 * 30 = 43,200 minutes in 1 month
43,200 / 20,000 = 2.16 text messages a minute
Click to expand...

The way you interpreted the equation is reversed. It should be 2.16 minutes per message (meaning 1 message every 2.16 minutes) or .4629 messages per minute.

Double the first number and halve the second number for the sent only number--- 4.32 minutes per message (meaning 1 message every 4.32 minutes) or .2314 messages per minute.

These numbers are based on 24-hour days and 30 day months. For 16-hour days and 30 day months I get 1.44 minutes per message sent/received or .6944 messages per minute sent/received and 2.88 minutes per message sent or .3472 messages per minute sent.

bartelby said:
You should take out 8 hours a day for sleeping and other time she can't text.
It'd work out near 3.5 per minute she's awake??

EDIT:Or have I got that wrong, I've just woken up?
Click to expand...

See my above replies for the correct computations for a 16 hour day and a 24 hour day.
 
Gah! that just means she sends a lot of those annoying mass text chain letters. Why anyone sends those I can't imagine, but I receive one about every three days.
 
The most interesting part for me is what was going through the girl's head. Did she not think about the bill? And I don't know how she managed this. I send about 1000 a month (doubled since I got my iPhone since I tend to send longer messages, and just 'cause I like texting on it :p) but most of them are rubbish that if I was on a plan that didn't include them I just wouldn't send

I'm loving the dad's solution :)
 
If you have texting disabled, I'm going to assume there is not internet, didn't the parents wonder what she was doing on her phone? Obviously someone is going to stare at a blank screen 24/7.
 
Parent's fault for letting her have a phone on contract. Pre-pay is the way to go with kids - once the top up is gone it's gone and the kid learns something about the cash value of sending a text or making a call.
 
joeshell383 said:
She sent AND received a total of about 20,000. It says right in your quotation that she sent 10K AND received about the same. Both incoming and outgoing message are billed.
Click to expand...

Is this true in the US? Are you billed for incoming texts? That seems a bit silly - in the UK we're only charged for outgoing texts.
 
joeshell383 said:
These numbers are based on 24-hour days and 30 day months. For 16-hour days and 30 day months I get 1.44 minutes per message sent/received or .6944 messages per minute sent/received and 2.88 minutes per message sent or .3472 messages per minute sent.
Click to expand...
In other words, 41.7 messages/hour sent or received and 20.8 messages/hour sent.

And assuming 15 seconds per text (I don't text so I'm just guessing), that's 41.6 hours of sending and 83.3 hours of sending/receiving (5.79% and 11.6% of total time in the month).
 
I have unlimited texts included with my monthly package. For 29 USD I get that and 600 minutes a month. What on earth am I going to do with 10 hours on the phone?! Anyway, the unlimited texts are subject to a "fair usage policy". I send maybe 150/200 a month, so I guess I'm low by today's standard. I don't like talking on the phone, so much rather send a one liner saying "I'll be there at 6" kinda thing.

20,000 is incredible.
 
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