Cell Phone Hell

I try to be responsible about my cell phone bills trying my hardest not to get more than 1 payment behind. I even got mad at my family members that had their cell phones or home phones cut off because they didn't pay their bills. I don't know how someone can get a $1,000 or more racked up on the phone bill but it happens!

I split with my ex-girlfriend and she promised that she would never take advantage of her keeping the cell phone I got for her IN MY NAME!

Well she made one payment about a month after we split and it was only for half her bill. A month after that I began to get the calls from the cell company to pay MY bill. This was not fun and I did contact her, she promised to pay it off within the next month. So I gave her the benefit of the doubt but she didn't pay anything. I got the calls again.

This time I was mad, MAD! I cancelled the phone, told them to mail the bills to my new address, and I would start making payments. I was being very nice and at this point I wanted to cut all ties to my ex. I had to pay almost $500 and started making $50 payments each week. I thought all was good now.

Wrong! I got the new bill and there was $400 more in charges! She had phoned the cell company and made them reconnect the phone even though I told them NO one else had any authority to make changes to this account. The phone company took no responsibility in their wrong doing and I now had almost $900 to pay back. I'm happy to say that she was not able to reactivate that phone again.

It took me about 6 months to pay this off because I had just moved and was working crappy jobs but thankfully living with some good friends.

Furniture Store Credit

I was approved for credit at the large well known furniture store here in Canada, it was awesome!

So I got a big screen 42" TV and a king sized bed! I was a bachelor at the time so both of these were important to have. The 16 months on interest no payment period went fast! I had always meant to pay it off before interest kicked in but it just didn't happen because I was working for the family business and not making any real money because the business was just paying my regular bills.

The heat was on to make my payments, and with 29.99% interest it felt like a never ending debit. It was self fueling building almost as fast as I made payments.

Even if I was one day late making a payment or they didn't register the payment I made a few days before the due date I would get a call. A few times I got behind and they called me every few days acting as if I didn't make payment arrangements with them. These calls always made me feel like dirt, like I was stealing from them or my need for food was not important. Never ever did I sense any sympathy towards me.

After moving in with my girlfriend who is now my wife, we had to deal with the same company because we didn't have any other way to get the furniture we needed. So again we went through this degrading process with this company. When we began to learn about debt reduction and budgeting we made a plan that paid off this store credit within 9 months!

Now we're using the same plan to pay down our credit cards...but this was delayed because we had to save some money to buy our new house!