DISAPPOINTED MOTHER!!!

You know most phone companies give you the option of blocking those
900 numbers, or whatever xxx numbers you want to have blocked.

Maybe it's something you need to check into?

(Likewise if he rang up over $250 in xxx calls, you might want to
check the internet usage too... just sayin) ;)

Yeah, telephone people. Don't you know that you're supposed to be
parents to her child? I bet you don't tell him to do his homework
either. Talk about irresponsible. You don't expect his mother to
actually have to do anything, do you?

The wrong people are procreating. Take responsibility for your own
child's behaviour. The kid racked up a huge bill, and instead of
making the kid take responsibility for his actions, you are
threatening legal action against the company.

Hope you're not planning on burdening the world with another spoiled,
confused, undisciplined brat.

Think of this as an opportunity to start parenting.

My younger brother is 13 years old and he did something similar. I
added an extra line on my cell phone contract, and he did very well
with it for a few months. Last month I received my cell phone bill,
and it was a little over $250. I called U.S. Cellular to find out
what made my bill so high, and it was from "interactive text
messaging," you know, the numbers on tv that you text for horoscopes
and such. They were not able to take all the charges off the bill, but
they were able to give paid credits worth half of the extra charges
because he is a minor. I did not ask them to do this as I understand
that the irresponsibility of a 13 year old boy is not their problem.
But, they were nice enough to do it anyway. Needless to say, my
little brother is mowing lawns and doing odd jobs around the house to
make up for the money my father sent me to pay the bill. There is no
reason to blame the company for what your son did. I don't know where
you live, but in most places, fast food restaurants will hire children
at ages 14 and 15. I suggest that your son learn some personal
responsibility and be held accountable for his actions. As an adult
if he had made those calls he would be responsible to pay for them,
being 15 years old should not get him "off the hook."

Your kid made the calls. Maybe you should make your child take
responsability for his actions.
You are a bad parent for not teaching your child responsability. If
this were my child his butt would be outside, cutting grass,
delivering newspapers and earning a way to pay back the phone bill. I
would not be complaining to the phone company. Thats your fault for
not being smart enough to get a 900 number block in the first place.

Your phone company most likely has 900 number blocking service. Use
it.

Look here : http://www.ehow.com/how_2090349_block-900-numbers.html

i'm sorry if i'm being simple, but do you mean he was calling phone
sex services? if so, HE called THEM, not vice versa. 15 year old
guys are full of raging hormones and they think about sex constantly.
sex isn't filthy, but it can be inappropriate. however, he initiated
it and i bet he enjoyed it. it's not the phone company's fault. make
him cough up the money. sounds like a summer job is in order.

I won't add to all the excellent comments made here but I would like
to say it's kind of sad that the mother doesn't get it. She is blaming
the phone company for something that is entirely her responsibility. I
don't think she is even aware of that.

This is a case when the "Village" should not be expected to parent a
child. It is the parent who should have been taking every precaution
that this didn't occur and when it did it should be the party who
disciplines the child.

Hopefully she will get it when she reads these responses.

think about it

Oh, please! This is not the fault of the phone company, it is your
son's. I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, okay, but you have to
promise me that you will not drop from a heart attack. Are you ready?
Are you sure? Okay, here we
go....................................................................
......................................YOUR LITTLE BUNDLE OF JOY IS NOT
A PERFECT LITTLE ANGEL WHO CAN DO NO WRONG!

No where in your letter do you say you are dealing with your son
regarding this. Do you not find him a bit responsible for anything?
You write that your son has been subjected to this filth. By the tone
of this letter, you actually make it appear that you your son is
innocent in all of this.

I am in no way condoning any part of this service, but these services
are out there by phone and online. And there is NO WAY to verify the
persons age.
People lie about this all the time...and evidently your son is no
different.

I doubt that you will hear from this company and if by chance you do
they will most likely respond that they do have a disclaimer that
states that this is an adult service and adult aged persons only are
permitted to sign on.

I know with some companies you can only leave one person authorized on
the account, and have a "pin". I would see if you can do that here to
prevent any future incidents in case. Other than that, even though
the phone company should have used better judgement you are
responsible for the bill, and you need to get your son to pay you for
it, whether it be with money, doing chores, etc. Or maybe take his
phone away from him to teach him you mean business. Hopefully you get
a response explaining why he was granted access to your account and
their reasoning behind it because I think that is wrong.

I agree that it's the sons fault. I also agree that he should have to
pay it. And maybe the phone company should have to wait for however
long it takes a 15 year old to pay it. If they will let 15 year olds
place it, they should have to suffer the consequences. I don't think
the mother should have to pay it.

I think the phone company also shares in the blame. These numbers
should automatically be blocked. It should require a credit card
entered into the phone in order to call a 900 number.

To the posters saying she's a bad mom and should be watching her son
like a hawk, you either don't have children or don't have a 15 year
old. She we all install hidden cameras in the house so the children
can be watched 24/7? Or maybe she should call a babysitter because we
should never let our children have the opportunity to screw up.

As so many have stated, this is your son's fault. He should take
responsibility. And as his mother, it is your responsibility to see
that he does. If you fix this for him, you're just teaching him that
nothing is his fault.

I have a 14-yr old son & I monitor his computer usage & his cell
phone. I pay for everything in the house so there is NO expectation
of privacy. And I'm very open with him about that. I don't sneak
behind his back - I hold out my hand for his cell phone to see who
he's calling & texting. I randomly check the computer to see the
sites he's visiting. And after a particularly offensive site was
found on his computer, I moved the computer to the living room so I
could see him when he was on the computer. The computer stayed in the
living room for more than six months & he's very careful now not to
abuse the privilege of not having me look over his shoulder all the
time.

Sounds like someone needs to be grounded and find a means to pay you
back for the phonecalls he made. If you absolve your son of
responsibility for what HE did, then you are setting him up for a
lifetime of trouble.

Ya know when I was about that age (13, exactly) I got into a similar
situation. But on a much larger scale. The bill, $1300! Instead of
sexlines, I called psychic hotlines. It was in the mid 90's when every
5 seconds you saw a commercial for those things.

Yeah when I did it I knew I was going to get into trouble. But I
dunno. I was testing my limits I guess. But let me tell you the way my
mother handled it. I learned about all about consequences. Boy howdy
did I ever!

She paid the bill off for me and then made the about 6 months of my
life all about paying her back. She immediately had 900 numbers
blocked from our phones. Took the phone out of my bedroom (and too a
13 yr old girl that is pretty traumatic!) and made me work for every
penny that I owed her. No allowance, only the most basic and cheapest
clothes and shoes. No fancy extras, extra chores with a monetary value
atached (a very modest one if I may add), all after school activities
were halted and I was made to go to my grandmothers after school so
she could keep tabs on me (and maybe give me a dollar or two if I
scrubbed her bathroom floor). She hooked me up with a job bagging
veggies at a locals farmer's market for the weekends and this was my
life until I paid her back every red cent. If friends would call she
would tell them I was not available and they should find me in school
the next day. If I had games or something I wanted to do on the
weekends that conflicted with work she would let me know that working
to pay off my obligations is my priority. And this all started in the
spring. By the time I got around to paying her back it was the middle
of winter!

But yes it really did force me to learn a lesson. It taught me that as
much as I wanted something I would have to work to have the means. And
that for every choice I make there is a definate consequence which is
not always enjoyable. But alas this is an adult's life.

But maybe trying an approach like this with your son will help him
understand. I think that if my mother would have just paid and given
me a slap on the wrist, or blamed the phone company and made me out to
be a victim that my life probably would have turned out really
different. This is a lesson, i think, learned the earlier the better.

Pamela, you might want to check out this thread:

http://www.planetfeedback.com/hilton+hotels/other/movies+at+the+hilton
/293558

15 years old?you make him sound like he is a helpless 4 year old! you
seem like one who "babys" your child. While how you raise your child
is completely up to you, you should also be discussing with your son
ways to pay off that bill. That is no one else's fault but his.Incase
he has mental handicaps? You should then keep a better eye on him and
what he's doing. Either way, is no excuse. And 15 years old is WAYYYY
more than old enough to know not to pick up that phone and dial some
adult hotline!

I agree with the other posters. Your son was and is the problem.
Make him handle it. He knew he was breaking the rules and it is not
the phone companys fault. I can guarantee you they have a recording
of your son lying about his age so save your attorney fees.

is an awful lot of money, even for phone sex - meaning he was on these
calls for extended periods.

One might ask where you were while he was making all these calls?

I'd be a disappointed mother too.

For a whole host of different reasons than the ones you express in
your letter.

Your son has been subjected to filth intended for a grown person
because he picked up the phone and repeatedly dialed either a 900 or
976 number that you, the parent, had the power to have the phone
company block for free.

Take the phone away from him and make him pay you back an amount you
can agree upon together. He's 15, he doesn't NEED a phone. You can
also get him a phone he can pay for himself if for some reason he DOES
need this phone (Im sure he doesn't need rides home from work yet),
then he will use up his minutes and not have it anymore once he does
something like this. He proved irresponsible in this situation. He
needs a consequence, not a mother sticking up for him with the phone
company. He will think it's ok and mom will figure out a way to fix
things for him.

The world of a grown man is everywhere.

Oh please. If your son is a typical male with unsupervised computer
access at home, he's been accessing adult porn since he was 12 or 13
years old.

I also don't agree that "porn" is "filth," but hey, you're entitled to
your opinion.

The problem here isn't the phone company -- the problem seems to be a
teenager who either doesn't respect limits, rules and boundaries
imposed by his parents, or a teenager whose parents didn't impose any
restrictions in his behavior.

Make your kid get a job and pay his own phone bill. Don't give
teenagers a free ride: You need to prepare him for adulthood. And
part of adulthood is finding the FREE porn on the 'net. Only suckers
or fetishists pay for porn.

When her son has run up credit card bills and she wants them forgiven,
because he was "only 18 or 19" when the big, bad credit card companies
gave him the chance to show his maturity. This will be because you
can't accept that your child did something that was not right and
needs to face the consequences. In this case, it was fairly minor.
Make him pay for the calls himself and discipline him appropriately.
Don't write letters like this so that he thinks that's how you act in
life and that there are no consequences.

So what you're saying, basically, is that the services adults have
access to should be limited to those that people think are appropriate
to expose their unsupervised kids to. That's not a reasonable demand.
It taking a village (as they say) doesn't mean the parents get to
control everyone else's lives in the name of controlling how their
children are raised.

Look, I get that parents have to leave the room with the phone or
computer in it sometimes and they can't be taking their children with
them every single time for 18 years. I get that kids today have
access to much more adult content via cable TV, internet access, and
phone "services" than my siblings and I did when we were children. I
do not think that if I had a 15-year-old son I would be enjoying
raising him right now. (Well, I suppose I would have become fond of
him by now, so maybe I would be enjoying it more than I think.) I
don't envy you by any means, and I do sympathize with your situation.

But you seem to be thinking that your son is the victim and the
company the perpetrator, when in fact it is you who are the victim,
and your son is the perpetrator. Blaming the company isn't going to
solve anything. You need to exercise more control over him, because
apparently he isn't capable of exercising enough control over himself.
The fact that he managed to achieve such an impressive phone bill
suggests that either he is incapable of recognizing that his actions
have consequences (in which case he needs to be better supervised) or
he isn't too worried about those consequences (in which case you need
to make them worse).

He couldn't have done this without access to a phone, which it appears
you provided. Of course I assume he is going to have a cell phone
with no contract so he can call 911, and no other access to any phone
(landline or wireless) you're responsible for paying for for the
foreseeable future. That should curtail his new hobby. But that
doesn't seem as if it will be enough to prevent him from finding a
different way to spend his time and your money. Maybe you can find
something he values that you won't be spending any more money on until
you have saved as much as you will be spending on his phone bills.
Maybe you can just lecture him about this from now until Labor Day. I
don't know.

But good luck with it. I hope you've got enough money left over to
hire an intimidating babysitter and go out with some of your friends
to let off some steam, because you'd have to be superhuman not to need
to right now.

You should be disappointed in your son - - not Telephone Support
Services. Your son obviously picked up the phone and dialed 900
numbers without your permission. I'm curious why, with a teenager
living in your home, you didn't have your local phone company block
these types of calls.

The CEO isn't going to discuss this bill with you nor can I see the
value in hiring an attorney who will cost you more than your son spent
to write a letter.

In addition to everything that others have already said (you know:
parent your child, not the company's problem etc.) you mention several
time you are wanting to handle this at the lowest possible level, yet
you are demanding to hear from the CEO???

As someone said below, a kid who is 15 will do things like this, until
he's shown that there are consequences for disobedience. Hell, when I
was a kid, (back in the *ahem* early 70s), I used to play on the phone
a lot. In fact, I remember calling someone in Alaska just to ask them
if they were an Eskimo. Of course, when that phone bill came in,
there was $17 worth of calls (a lot of money for back then), and my
father went ballistic. Of course, he knew that my older brother and
sister didn't make those calls, so guess who had to pay? Me. Through
labor over the next few weekends. And rightfully so.

$264 is a lot of money, but it's a pretty cheap price to pay to teach
your child responsibility.

Consider it another lesson in child rearing.

I agree with the others, this is on your son's shoulder's not the
services. How exactly do you think they should verify someone's age?
Send someone to the house?

This is just a sad, sad example of the way so many people refuse to
take responsibility for their own actions, or for those of their
children - for whom you are responsible for 18 years.

YOUR CHILD made these calls. HE should pay for them. And if he can't,
YOU have to. It is not this phone service's responsibility to parent
your kid - it's yours. If your son can't be trusted with the phone,
you need to take away his access to it. If it were my kid, he would
have his phone priviliges taken away and he'd be working part time to
pay off every cent of that phone bill.

I'm sorry, but while I sympathize with you for having this problem
with your son, I have NO sympathy for the way you're trying to foist
off the responsibility that is yours and your son's.

Others have made some good points, that I won't rehash.

However, I wonder... what COULD a company that provides a service like
this do to verify age?

By phone, there is no way to do this. Any question they could
possibly ask him would NOT verify his age. At best, it would verify
that he has the credit card or driver's license of an adult. Easy for
most kids and teens to get.

It's true: a child of any age, old enough only to know how to dial a
phone, could call. When asked "Are you over 18?" a child's answer of
"yes" is no proof. A child can't legally, "agree" to anything.

The problem, therefore, is in the existence of these services in the
first place. Personally, I've never used them ("yeah, Jeffrey,
sure... whatever you say...") and don't plan to. But I respect that
there are adults that want to use said services. So, I need to tell
my 5 year old to NOT go near the phone. When he's older, I'll tell
him that he's only allowed to make calls when I dial for him (e.g., to
call his friends). A little older, I'll tell him that he can only use
the phone to call people that I know. And that he'll need special
permission to call someone else. When he's out of the house, it's his
problem.

I simply don't see a solution, Pamela. They can't possibly verify
who's calling.

What would you suggest? Does your lawyer have any ideas how a company
can provide a service like this and guarantee that kids can't call?

Becuase, you know, this company dialed the number for your son,
super-glued it to his ear, and tied him up so that he could not escape
the horrible, horrible filth.

He's fifteen. He should be held responsible for his own actions. Make
him pay the bill and punish him; problem solved.

Also, at fifteen, he likely knows more about the "world of a grown
man" than you'd think.

The lowest level here seems to be the person you see when you look in
the mirror.

Having your son pay the bill is the right way to handle this.

I lived in a house with 16 single rooms. There was a "house phone"
that was paid using the honor system. A new resident to the community
made 23 hours of adult calls in a 24 hour period (!) on that phone,
and when asked for his name he gave another resident's name. The bill
came to $400 as I recall.

Fortunately, the company recorded his voice, and we were able to
identify him. Of course he paid for the calls, as he was liable for
them. Your son will learn a valuable lesson if this company floows
through on charges for the services delivered.

I don't know what company you're writing to, Pamela, but if it's what
I think it is, then they most likely had a recording saying that if he
was under the age of 18, he should hang up. A service like this is for
ADULTS, and I'm not sure how else they can verify age.

And of course, this begs the question on where his mother was (hint:
you) when he was making the calls.

No, I don't think YOU should be responsible for paying the bill, but I
do think your son should. That will help teach him that his actions
have consequences.

As for your disappointment, who are you more disappointed with: the
company, your son, or yourself?

Pamela,

What you describe sounds like the " do you have Prince Albert in the
can? ...Please let him out. " scenario from back in my day.

However, these days kids getting their jollies has escalated much
beyond prank calls.

These calls did not happen overnight. Your son at 15 years of age
should have been pre-warned on this and the myriad of other things to
avoid a long time ago with periodic reinforcement.

How a company guards against underage users probably involves a
statement on their part about a certain having to be attained and
maybe a question as to the caller's birthdate. As we all know this
does not always work.

To run up a bill of $ 264.67 your son must have been in contact with
the "service" for more than just a casual call or two.

Sorry to hear that the original representative was rude but that is
often the perception when people hear news that they don't want to
accept and the messenger all of a sudden becomes the bad guy.

Stop back and let us know what the company says and as an unsolicited
suggestion in the mean time you might triple check cellphone and
computer parental controls.

Good luck.
BillR.

I am so sorry to hear that this company came to your house and forced
your son to call their number and stay on the line after the recording
instructed him that, if he were under the age of 18, he needed to hang
up.

Bottom line is, your son is the one who chose to be disobedient and
deceptive. If he has a job, he needs to pay you for an bills he
incurred. If he does not have a job, you can list items of his on
eBay until you have recouped enough money to cover the bill he
created.

This company is not responsible for the willful misconduct of your
child.