A Positive (mostly) Family Story

[davewe]

My wife has lived in the US almost 3 years. The 1st year communication with her mother was difficult. There is no computer or internet at the family home. My MIL did not have a cell phone. However, there are many brothers and sisters, some of whom live at the family home or close by. Janet would call her bros or sises until she got a hold of someone who was close to home and they would walk the phone over and hand it to mom. It was not a great system :(

About a year ago we were in Cebu City and I suggested that Janet buy a phone for her mom. We shopped for an affordable flip phone. Now I insisted that Janet tell her mom and family that the phone was for mom only, not to be loaned out to every kid, otherwise we would be back to the original situation. The phone was pretty basic and I wondered how long it would last.

But for a year the system worked great. Janet could call her mom whenever she wanted and her mom kept the phone with her and it was used almost exclusively for Janet and her mother to communicate - which they did often.

But a few weeks ago Janet's sister, who lives next door, borrowed the phone. As I was told, she placed the phone on top of her fridge to keep it away from her 2 young kids. The phone fell and broke badly. My MIL was furious, knowing the phone was her lifeline to Janet. They took it to someone to try to fix but it couldn't be done. Janet and I felt like her sister (or sister's hubby) should get a new phone. There was lots of talk about what should be done. I am proud of the fact that Janet did not run right out and send money to replace it; she felt like they should figure it out. Nonetheless I was OK with the possibility that sooner or later a request might come. After all I reasoned, the phone cost less than $50 and did last a full year.

Janet's brother is 20 and works at a mall in Cebu City. We all know what that means in terms of his income. I am not sure how it all happened but a younger brother was visiting the 20 year old in Cebu City, since the summer was ending. The 20 year old bought and sent home a phone for mom. 

I am sure it is not an expensive phone but bottom line is that Janet and her mother can talk again and all is right with the world. And I have once again been shown that I have a great Philippines family.

[robert k]

I am glad things worked out.

I have stopped buying a phone for anyone. I never bought the top of the line phones because I never saw the utility as being that high  and the cost benefit as being low. I do appreciated that they are a communication device which is vital, an entertainment device often which may be sorely appreciated at times and the only camera available when life's moments need to be captured. But I will not buy anyone anything more than a bottom of the line dumb phone because invariably if it's a decent/good phone, someone always wants to borrow it and it gets demolished because they don't care, they will not be fixing or replacing it when it breaks and so their two year old wanders around trying to smash the concrete floor with it and nobody pays attention.

I'm not even going to pass down my old phones anymore because I hate to see a decent piece of kit abused so I will just stop doing it. I wouldn't loan out a motorcycle or a car and now $100 and up phones have just become the lower extremity of things I don't consider a fungible good, which I used to do, largely because I used to expect that some small amount of energy would be exerted to preserve them in working order. I no longer have any such expectation.

[Sander Martin]

Dont you just love it when things work our here without you having to pay the bill :).

I gave my fiance my old Samsung S4 when i upgraded to Samsung S6 Edge+. Her old phone was a piece of crap and my old S4 was still working perfect. I went to Estonia for a month and came back to find her using her old phone again. I asked her what happened to the S4. Apparently her mother went to Manila and Bicol for 5 weeks and asked for her phone, because it had a better camera. I didn't really understand the situation, but i just told myself "oh well its the Philippines". In any western country it would be super strange to borrow your phone (that you are using) to some1 for weeks and weeks, but thats how they do it here :D We got the phone back in same condition tho :P

 

[El Negrito]

@robert k I couldn't agree with you more.

 

@everyone I have lived in Mexico for 10 years and bought my first smartphone shortly after arriving. I asked my, then fiance and now, late wife if she wanted one too. She said no until I got mine, then she wanted one. Shortly before our wedding I had a friend coming for the wedding bring one for her that I had bought on Ebay, it was exactly the same as mine.

Long story short over 10 years neither of us lost a phone and we always had protective cases for them (I mean for goodness sake they only cost 5-20 dollars). I usually went with the heavy duty "armor" types but my wife always preferred the silicon rubbery ones. She NEVER broke, lost or lent a phone out, in fact I still have her last phone in storage. I only ONCE broke one on a visit to the states, I dropped it on a wooden floor and it was a very short drop, I was stunned as I had once or twice on concrete and nothing happened. I guess it was just the right angle, anyway I was able to buy a new screen for about $10 and replace it myself, good to go.

So for 10 YEARS I have only taken minimal precautions and only had one incidents, here in Mexico I have seen a LOT of people lose or break their phones. I have a lot of friends in the Philippines who often message me saying something like "Sorry I haven't messaged in a while, I broke/lost my phone." I just don't get it, just a small amount of energy and precaution is needed to preserve these darn things.

Buy a protective case, if someone asks to "borrow" it the answer is "NO" (I mean unless it's just for a few minutes to make a quick call because they are out of load or their battery has no juice.) Especially in the case where someone has given it to you as a gift. All you have to say is "No you can't borrow this for a week, your sister or her husband have given it to me as a gift and I can't take the chance that an "accident" might happen." Sure they might get pissed, but oh well too bad for them, they will get over it.

I can't name the amount of times my late wife and I had to say no to loans (of money) to people we knew had even a slight chance of not paying it back. My late wife's brother was the family cash cow and everyone tried to borrow money from him. One time my nephew broke his arm because my other deadbeat brother in law wasn't watching his kids. He asked for money for the hospital bill and my brother in law was just like my late wife and said no because he knew that, first of all it was the deadbeat's fault, second he would never see that money again and MOST importantly, he knew his brother had to wake up and man up. I know that seems extreme but you had to be there, it really wasn't cruel and he told us later that he would have paid in the end but he just wanted to see what his brother would and if he would man up, which he eventually did.

I'm not saying never to borrow and my late wife and I have asked for loans but we paid them back immediately. If you are dealing with responsible people then I see no problem, with lending money. A cell phone or anything else then no way. (One exception is to lend a car to someone who has had an accident or whose car has broken down, but again they have to be SUPER close to you and SUPER responsible.)

OK, sorry about the rant, you may now return to your regularly scheduled programming. 

P.S. What happened to partial quotes and multi-quotes?

 

Edited June 7, 2016 by El Negrito

[robert k]

I have no problem in driving someone wherever they need to go, within reason. A few minutes use of a phone is no problem. Out of my sight for more than 5 minutes. Nope, not happening.

[mogo51]

I am still trying to work out why the sister who borrowed the phone and then broke it (albeit indirectly), did not replace the phone?

[El Negrito]

1 hour ago, robert k said:

I have no problem in driving someone wherever they need to go, within reason. A few minutes use of a phone is no problem. Out of my sight for more than 5 minutes. Nope, not happening.

Amen! Preach brotha'!

[El Negrito]

1 hour ago, mogo51 said:

I am still trying to work out why the sister who borrowed the phone and then broke it (albeit indirectly), did not replace the phone?

Million dollar question. I'd be like you broke it you bought it. Don't want to pay? I will just take something you have of equivalent value, than you very much, good day. (Make sure you are in their house when that happens.) 

[Tukaram (Tim)]

1 hour ago, mogo51 said:

I am still trying to work out why the sister who borrowed the phone and then broke it (albeit indirectly), did not replace the phone?

Any number of reasons.... she does not have money.  She knew someone else would pay for it.  It was not her phone, thus not her problem (I think that is more common that I would want to believe).

I had a Leatherman multi tool I carried with me at work, for times I did not want to go back to my truck for my tool pouch.  We were under a building one day and one of the guys asked to borrow it.  I loaned it to him and then saw he was going to cut a live wire.  I told him to stop but he cut it and melted the tip of my Leatherman (burned his hands too but I did not care).  When I told him to buy me a new one he laughed and said I should not have loaned it to him.  I had the supervisor remove him from my truck. He had been kicked off numerous trucks and got in a knife fight with someone already.  Of course he never paid me for the tool.  There are jerks all over. 

[davewe]

16 hours ago, mogo51 said:

I am still trying to work out why the sister who borrowed the phone and then broke it (albeit indirectly), did not replace the phone?

It was probably a money problem, but as with all things we will never know for sure.