Struggling to keep it together and today lost my last options. Please help? $echovoxxx
Starting last July I was in a car accident, which lead to health issues which caused my previous job which I loved to sour against me and ultimately fire me on some bullshit technicality (official reason… knitting. No im not kidding. My therapist suggested I take this up to help with the anxiety which was great until I got booted with no warning.) despite the union fighting this they finally got me. On top of that my partner had been struggling on DoorDash and the car we inherited to do that with had just been under constant repair. I lost my job in march after months of work playing games with me (if yall want that whole story that’s a super fun rollercoaster of a ride in and of itself) which was already straining my mental health on top of physical health. Several close friends’ very tragic and untimely deaths, happened at the same time and I kind of had a mental breakdown for a bit. Job market sucks? Won’t bore you with that sob story, I’m sure it’s familiar to all of us at some point, but our savings are long gone I’ve been doing surveys for petty cash here and there to try and keep a few drops of gas in the tank and clean laundry on the kids but we’re struggling. Things had kinda started looking up but… Well today was the straw that broke the camels back. Home WiFi got shut off last week and we don’t have the $50 to turn it back on.
Tonight just an hour ago or so as my partner and I were sitting in bed trying to cheer ourselves up we got a sickening reality check as both our phones pinged to notify us the phone plan got suspended too. I guess the last two bills didn’t actually go thru and wasn’t notified but now T-Mobile want the past due amount of $250 or so to reinstate the plan which… we simply don’t have. I just cried to some poor T mobile rep who isn’t being paid enough for this stuff and their exhausted supervisor about all this because i don’t know what to do here. They can’t do anything for me, there’s no leeway.
We finally got SNAP for food stamps recently which has helped a lot and unemployment still hasn’t come through because my state is playing stupid games trying to make me win stupid prizes. The waiting game isn’t putting gas in the car or paying the bills, and genuinely this has me at breaking point. I keep seeing nightmares of losing the house and never seeing the kids again or losing my partner because now we can’t even work to get the money together and T-Mobile isn’t willing to even give us a day to try and get the money together or work it up. I’m desperate and sitting here in the local McDonald’s parking lot at 3:52am using their free WiFi taking the dog for a walk to even try and post this and let people know why I’ll be offline. I’m too embarrassed to tell my parents because I know they’d want to help but they just retired and my dad had open heart surgery last year and I can’t bring myself to do that. I couldn’t take their money when I know they don’t have any to spare. I have to tell them something though as to why I can’t call or message them. I’m dreading this call already and I hate it possibly even more than I hate that I cried to a T-Mobile rep or that I’m here showing complete strangers that I am struggling mentally with this situation.
I turned to camming during Covid when I had lost my entire industry completely (live music production and tour management) and I had to change careers suddenly from something I loved to an unknown. I grew to love IT actually but now it’s rough out there searching for a job while also having panic attacks. I’ve had to turn back to camming and of which has been increasingly difficult with the mental and physical health being what they are… and now I can’t even do that to get money together.
Also I’m pretty sure McDonald’s would frown upon me camming in their parking lot. While it’s probably not the weirdest thing they’ve probably seen I don’t want to tempt winning that title just yet.
It feels like every time we’ve got something under control all hell breaks loose again and we slide back further than where we were. I mean I’m here at 4am unloading a year of pent up frustration and stress to Reddit in hopes of some kind of help….
It’s been baby steps getting shit together and genuinely I had been starting to feel less crappy but this blow has seriously knocked the little bit of confidence I had built back up completely down again and who wants to see a depressed potato feeling miserable on cam while worrying that if I can’t make a goal amount that our lives are going to actually crumble? Actually scratch that I’m sure there’s a fetish out there for that but I’ll never know now without any kind of connection to go online with.
But that’s my sob story, I’m just too exhausted and burnt out to feel any embarrassment now. Any little helps, and I can show my thanks with free subs for a year (for those over 18 obviously) and whatnot to the old smut archives for anyone who is kind enough to help out. Or if you’re more into diy and punk stuff, I’ll paint you a custom jacket patch happily! Giant flaming unicorns with penis wings? You got it. I don’t have an Etsy, kind of can’t set one up without a phone or WiFi… running one without WiFi or phone at least might be a bit of a struggle too. But any assistance that can help us get us back online or information on resources for this kind of situation would be appreciated more than you could imagine.
$echovoxxx
Bonus: if it matters, we have four adorable cats who I possess a near bottomless supply of ridiculous and adorable photos of available upon request.
E; UPDATE: my parents ended up helping a lot with the phone bill and that got reinstated… spoke to a different manager who was a lot more sympathetic and did some digging for me. So fun story…. We found not one or two but THREE lines on the account I don’t remember adding. The phone is in my name as it was my account from before my partner and I got together. We’re the only authorized users on it and I definitely have only just got us new or upgraded phones in the past few years. The plan consists of myself and my partner and my best friend, we had some deal of four lines for whatever to begin with so there only ever should have been four lines at all. Somehow there’s THREE NEW ONES? And one is at least a few years old. WTF right???? Well now there’s a fraud thing going on as to what the hell store these lines got added at. The kicker is they’re all showing current activity on them… and the phones myself my partner and my best friend have are somehow linked to these extra lines not the ones we actually use?! The manager I spoke to suspects there could have been someone adding the lines at the times we got a new or upgraded our phones and at best, someone neglected to tell me I was adding additional lines but at worst there have been some instances where they’ve found folks added lines with promos and just keeping the SIM card knowing the plan owner isn’t going to use the line. I’m a little annoyed because I had something like this happen with one of those kiosk stores in malls which was a franchise messing around with a phone I purchased and specifically had wanted to pay installments on the plan with the intent of owning a phone outright at the end so I could unlock it and have the freedom to just switch carriers if I wanted. I’ve always done phones like this because my family used to be abroad and I like the freedom of being able to just buy a SIM card and some credit when I’d go visit and be able to remain connected. I specifically said I did NOT want the lease option at all. Come to find out about a year later they wanted $300 or the phone back. T-Mobile looked it up and found the kiosk employees had a sweet scam going to pad numbers boost sales bonuses I guess where they went in afterwards like as quickly as a few hours after leaving the store to like the next day, and were doing return exchanges to make it seem as if customers were changing their minds to actually get the lease instead. Because I kept the original paperwork showing I’d ONLY signed for a phone Id own outright at the end, T-Mobile basically ended up crediting me the cost of a brand new (at the time) iPhone 6s. They took real good care of me after that and I sometimes wonder if my account has a big “holy shit give her what she wants and triple check everything is exactly as she requested. we screwed up big” stamp on it or whatever because my customer experience with them has been pretty consistently smooth after that. They can’t apologize enough when I find issues and go over the top with apology credit sometimes. I have a gross feeling that the store my partner and I started going to is a franchise not a corporate location or something and there might be something funky going on there. Several managers joined this guy on our call to do fact finding with me questioning me about which location who we spoke to do I remember the interaction and have the paperwork still (of course I do I am an adhd paper hoarder and have every piece of paper I’ve ever encountered in my life saved in a drawer.) and can I send a copy of what I was give. So they can compare to store and sales records. I get a call sometime today with updates on what they find here. Never thought I’d be one to hope that I’m the clown who wasn’t aware of a promo details but here I am because I’m going to i lose my figurative shit if I find that someone added lines with our phones and I’ve been covering their nephews phone bill for the past however long. Check your bill every month and really check stuff line by line I guess is the lesson here kids.