h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Always a problem for dissent in any shared household.

Rules of engagement.

1. Get an itemised bill, for all calls if possible, from your supllier then you can work out when the phone has been called and by home.

2. Put a book beside the phone/s for all residents to log their calls. (When I was student there tended to be only one phone in the house and this book was centrally located these days there may be more than one extension or line)

3. If possible get a phone tarrif that includes free calls especially in the evening. This will save a lot of pickering.

4. Once the bill comes in all sit down together to sort it out, line rental and communal calls can be spilt evenly amonst you before deviding the bill up.

5. If disputes continue either stop out going calls or install a coin box phone for outgoing calls. The phone bill is not worth the bloodshed.

I found out that in the US, AT&T offers a service free of charge, whereby everyone can have their own perosnal "PIN" number that they dial before making outgoing calls. Then, on the bill, it lists the calls made with each PIN. Same idea as the book, or coin box, but let's you have multiple lines etc.

A friend of mine had that on his student phone, he was one of the students as well as landlord heaven knows what that cost back in the early 90s but he says it was worth it.

Ok - I am a student living with three other people - they lived on my Coridor last year, and we rent a house a little way from UEA now.

Tonight, we had the phone bill argument. What happens is that the phone bill is in three parts:

1) the phone numbers, tally of calls, length of time, and total cost)
2) the service charge (flat rate)
3) the vat

now.. the problems are:

1) we have identified 50% of the phone numbers called (all the ones above 30p)
2) everyones added up their ammounts of how much they think the should pay
3) this dosnt match the bill.

So we caculate lots of different billing methods untill everyone agrees on a price.

This system works because

1) the bill is in my name
2) ive just taken up Kung Fu so when it breaks down into a "physical argument", im no longer the weak underdog so :. am paying less

J [manChicago] in Norwich UK