Loaned Cell Phone

[Zafra]

What is the name of your state? - Florida

While my ex-roomate was living with me, she was using and making a reasonable effort to pay for a cell phone which is in my name. I had asked her to get the cell phone switched over to her name but she did not.

She has not lived with me for the past 2 months, and in that time the cell phone charges have jumped up and she owes me $612.98 for usage. She keeps giving me excuses why she can't pay and has not made any effort to give me anything citing poor wages, etc. She came to the house and looked the bills over, claiming certain numbers she did not call. She wanted me to call the cell phone company and get them taken off the bill but I have refused citing no proof that those calls were not her responsibility. ( I called the numbers myself and they knew who she was)

I have given her an ultimatum to pay by a certain date. If she does not pay, my husband and I would like to take her to small claims court over these payments. I do have witnesses I can call upon to verify she had the phone - what do you think our chances would be of winning? I get the impression even if we do "win", we may never see the money.

Thank you in advance for your advice!

 

[djohnson]

What you need is to show what your agreement with her as far as payments were. Was it a verbal or written contract? Because the phone is in your name the bills are your responsibility. You can sue her for breach of your contract (if you have one) in that amount. If there is nothing in writing and she claims ya'll were sharing the phone or a different story it will be up to you to prove. If there was no contract and she wasn't paying and you had nothing to gain from the arrangement why didn't you just call and cancel the phone or take it back? This is probably going to be asked in court so you need to think about that. If you are going to try and persue it send her a notice RRR so you have a paper trail to back up trying to collect from her first.

 

[Zafra]

Thank you for the perspective.

I didn't shut it off sooner because frankly I am a co-dependent person who was being way too nice to the wrong party. Obviously I am working on empowering myself now (late as it may be in this situation).

I will be sending a letter to her first requesting payment, but I know she is moving soon and frankly I'm not sure she will respond. I can hopefully get her boss to testify she had the phone, since she used it for work. (Nextel - two way feature) That of course doesn't prove to a third party she had it 'all the time' I suppose.

Another related thing I didn't bring up in the initial post - I called the three numbers she claimed she didn't call right as she was leaving my house and they knew her. She didn't know I was going to call, and not two hours later she posted something nasty about me 'calling all her friends' on her livejournal via the internet. She wouldn't have known that unless she truly did know the people at those numbers! I'm just not sure that kind of evidence would be admissible in court.