Teen sends 14,528 text messages, dad gets 440 page bill

[Xanthos]

Originally Posted by Ject

Thats the thing though, it's not just all crammed into 1 hour of the day and then the rest of the day is free....

Its.. a text basically every .. what 2 minutes? meaning its almost a 24/7 thing because they got the phone.. they are reading what So and So just said.. clicking around.. then re texting back.. etc..

I'd rather have the kid be talking and speaking words instead of typing abbreviated junk all day long.

My 5-10 second estimate had nothing to do with abbreviations. If you go through my entire text log, I use the same typing/writing style I use on these forums - and it still only takes about that long for me to send a text. MAYBE 20 seconds if its a long text. I agree that 15,000 texts is too many, but not on the basis of how long it takes to send a text - just on the basis of that being too many.

Also, I don't know about AT&T, but Alltel lists outgoing AND incoming texts in the same number. Which really means she only send about 7500 texts, assuming she received the same number. Its also possible that she sent 3000 texts and just happened to receive 12,000 over the course of the month.

I send/receive a text about every 10 minutes on average, but its usually a matter of "60-100 texts in this one hour period minute period, wait 3 hours, then 15 texts over 30 minutes" etc. Its very possible that this is also the case with this teen.
- Xanthos

P.S. - Edited for improved clarity.

[Grape Ape]

About a year ago one of my co-workers added her 13 year old son to her family plan, but didn't think about getting a text messaging plan. The first month he racked up almost $500 in text message fees. Fortunately for him, Tmobile let her add the plan retroactively...