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 how high this mom’s cell phone bill regularly is: “The usual $385 seems too expensive, much less the $5,185. You need to shop around.”
As if this mom wasn’t already feeling bad, another person pointed out what the rest of us are thinking: “Not to go tangential to the topic of this sub, but if your daughter is meeting strangers online and talking with them without you knowing, that’s potentially a bigger concern than even a massive bill. Lots of horror stories of kids being targeted by predators pretending to be their same age, specifically through Roblox.”
This isn’t the first — and most certainly won’t be the last — time a youngster unknowingly racked up their parent’s bill.
One 5-year-old boy was left unattended with his parents’ phone and placed an over $3,000 Amazon order.
“You bought seven cars on Amazon. You spent over $3,000 on Amazon today. How did you do that? You are in so much trouble,” the shocked mom of the little boy said in a now-viral TikTok video captioned, “and casually had another $700 of items in the cart ready to check out with before we caught him. i’m currently on the phone crying to amazon – my husband is on the phone crying with our bank…”
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