Can any phone people give me advice please!

[Kiwi]

Gah, ok because of cashflow problems (ie kyle and I having sparadic paycheques) we have apprently become $500 behind in our cell phone bill!!!

every month he told me he had paid the bill when he hadnt (or only part of it) and now they want to cut off out phones (and quite rightly to!)

now we dont have $500 sitting around to pay the bill in full so I was wondering.... what are the chances the phone company could let us pay it off over 2 months (as well as our regular charges) like an extra $100 on top of our regular charges?

grrr I didnt know until the bill arrived yesterday and I dont want to be a sucky customer at all (he didnt pay the bill so they have every right to want their money)Im just wondering I guess if theres anyway to save our phones being cut off.... or do you think they will want us to pay the entire balance?

oh god I am not looking forward to this phone call... I bet you guys hear that excuse a million times a day :(

I swear if I had known about the bill earlier it would have never ever gotten to be so far behind. I have never been behind on my bills, ever. The bills came out of kyles bank account before (now we have a joint chequing) so I didnt bother to check once he had said he had paid. We cant even go to his parents because he just borrowed $200 for his car insurance

Trust mr excuses to tarnish my good reputation :rolleyes: Im so very embaressed about the whole thing :o Any advice will be apprieciated.

[draftermatt]

A friend of mine got into a similar fix with Verizon. All he had to do was go into the stores, give them some money, and promise to pay more when he could. They always turned it back on.

It doesn't hurt to try.

[Lackwit]

Yeah, I've been in a similiar situation with $print, and I worked it out through a little bit of polite explanation/pleading to a CSR. I've found that so long you get some of their money to them, they're willing to make accomodations.

[BlaqueKatt]

A friend of mine got into a similar fix with Verizon.
It doesn't hurt to try.

actually we just want your money-and will more often that not wait to get our greedy little paws on it-I used to transfer people to financial services about 10-15 times a day to make payment arrangements-don't sweat it, and you don't need excuses-just tell the rep you want to make payment arrangements-we really don't need(or really want) to know your personal business.

BlaqueKatt-yes I can hear you now, no it's not funny/cute anymore-wait it never was

[Barefootgirl]

You need to speak to them ASAP. Most carriers will be reasonable, set up a payment plan etc as long as you speak to them and explain the situation right away. The big players are all fairly similar in approach, but you seem to have been lucky so far that they haven't cut you off !

Oh, and if you guys are on sporadic paycheques - prepaid is the way to go ! I recommended this in ljt's thread; Virgin for CDMA or T-Mobile for GSM. That way you are both responsible for your own bills, and you simply can't run up huge unpaid bills.

[BlaqueKatt]

Virgin for CDMA

actually virgin mobile is a reseller, they buy blocks of airtime from Verizon and resell it(VZW does have it's own pre-pay), only 3 carriers have/use CDMA, they are: Verizon Wireless(VZW), US Cellular, and Sprint. Anyone else that claims to have it is a reseller, not their towers/equipment so if something goes wrong-good luck!

BlaqueKatt-who actually likes working for Verizon Wireless-I've learned so much useless stuff......

[Barefootgirl]

Thanks Blaquekatt, i know Virgin is a reseller (I was actually an adviser on the setting up of the US operation in 2001!), but they do one of the best prepaid deals in the US at the moment, hence my advice to go with them for prepaid CDMA rather than VZW or indeed Sprint itself. Virgin doesn't buy airtime from Verizon actually, it is entirely hosted on Sprint's network. Virgin and Sprint were equal partners in the JV that set up the Virgin Mobile USA MVNO, each chucking $50m in the pot. Verizon didn't even come to the party.

There are also quite a lot more carriers in the US that use CDMA and who have their own networks than just those three; Alltel for one, and about 150 weeny little carriers around the country. With the Weeny-Nets, they tend to have jsut a small handful of towers in their local area, and as soon as you leave the local area, you'll roam onto someone else's net, which can get pricy. If something goes wrong when roaming, Weeny-net's customers can complain to Weeny-Net, who'll take up the issue with VZW/Sprint/Alltel/USCC/Random Weeny-Net...who DO like keeping their high-value wholesale customers happy, so to say that reseller customers are "on their own" is stretching it slightly...

*can talk for hours and hours on the subject of the US mobile industry*

[Kiwi]

thanks for everyones advice

Kyle rang and they said we could have until the 10th of November to make a payment (we both get paid again on the 1st) and can pay it in full then (we made a payment yesterday of $150)

were both on contracts which would be $200 each to get out of so thats not an option, and the pay should be regular from now on, (we both started new jobs within 2 weeks of each other) and managed to both miss the pay cut off by like 3 days....(as in by the time our blank cheques were handed in the pay had already been put through)

It wont be a problem anymore, I now handle ALL of our bills and kyle doesnt even have access to the joint account from his debit card :p Like I said, I have never been late with anything before this bill and im mortified about it!

anyway enough airing of my dirty laundry! Thanks again for everyones help.

[Seanette]

Thanks Blaquekatt, i know Virgin is a reseller (I was actually an adviser on the setting up of the US operation in 2001!), but they do one of the best prepaid deals in the US at the moment, hence my advice to go with them for prepaid CDMA rather than VZW or indeed Sprint itself.
I'm not sure I understand such tech matters as CDMA or VZW, but I can attest to excellent customer service on Virgin Mobile.

My particular phone is at times slightly flaky (calls sometimes roll straight to voicemail instead of ever ringing), but I blame Kyocera for that, and will probably in the not-too-distant future consider getting another phone. I'm sticking with the same carrier, though. I'm happy with them, why go somewhere else and risk another TracFone-style debacle?