A Brief Note on the Perils of Phone Plans

From the comments section of this Crooked Timber thread, after some horror stories about the large telephone bills resulting from excessive texting comes this warning:

Like many other consumer companies (e.g., credit card issuers, health clubs), a good piece of the phone companies’ revenue comes from dinging consumers who misestimate their future usage. This can leave you with a whopping bill, which in turn leads to yelling at the teenage daughter, which leads to an outraged sense of injustice on her part, because she isn’t texting more heavily than her friends, etc. Downward spiral, no communication between father and daughter, unhealthy compensatory relationships with other males, teen pregnancy, heroin addiction . . . all because you didn’t get the right cell phone plan.