The Phone Cops, Part 2

Once, years ago, I deliberately let an account go to collection, despite the fact that I value my good credit rating and I'm vigilant about paying off debts.

I had signed up for a certain number of payments on an item, and I was sure that I had paid the requisite number. Whenever I contacted the company and asked them for the exact date the debt was due to be paid, they either flatly ignored my letters or were cagey, insisting that I owed more without telling me when they had my last payment scheduled. I took to saying, "I want a copy of the forms that I signed," and they ignored me.

So, I let them send it to a collection agency. When I explained the issue to them, they asked the company for copies of my contract. It turns out that I'd miscounted by 2 payments (math is not my strong suit). Armed with a copy of the contract, with a printed "paid in full by" date on it, I happily sent in a check for the two remaining payments, and never heard from them again.

I've written before about my attempts to get my mother's phone turned off after her death. It's been nine months now since she passed away. The granddaughter who lives in Mom's house recently brought me a piece of mail. "It's addressed to Grandma; it's from a collection agency," she said. Of course, it's about the phone. AT&T claims that Mom owes them almost $200. They have turned off her phone, but not because we requested it - they claim that she's not paying her bill.

My knee-jerk reaction was to say, "Good luck proving that she legitimately acquired this debt from beyond the grave! She doesn't need the phone where she is! Go ahead and trash her credit - she doesn't need that either!" That is, however, both juvenile and misplaced hostility. I'm not angry at the collection agency, I'm angry at AT&T. In fact, I welcome the agency's involvement. Maybe AT&T will have to respond to them, instead of ignoring them or giving them the runaround.

I sent the collection agency this letter:

"To Whom It May Concern,

The enclosed form has been forwarded to me as the trustee of the estate of Mrs. B. E. Smith, otherwise known as Mrs. E. R. Smith (her husband, E. R. Smith, passed away in 1988, but some accounts, including this one, remain in his name.)

Mrs. Smith passed away on October 30, 2012. As her bills came in, each was paid in full and each account holder was provided with a copy of the enclosed letter, dated November 19, 2012, notifying them of Mrs. Smith's passing, and requesting that all her accounts be cancelled. Every creditor except AT&T complied with this request. Her final accounts, including this one, were paid in full after her passing.

Over the last eight months, AT&T has been notified by mail, by phone and via the Internet of Mrs. Smith's passing, numerous times, with a request to cancel her account. Most communication from us has been simply ignored, but I have also encountered the following, through various AT&T channels:

1.       The letter was never received, because it was sent to the wrong address. When I requested  the correct address, I was told, "I'm sorry, I don't have that information."

2.       The phone number provided on the AT&T bill for customer service, as well as the phone number provided on their web page, does not connect to an operator, but to a recording that informs me that, "Service cannot be cancelled over the phone."

3.       The link provided for "modify or cancel service" on the web page takes me to a page that informs me that, "Service cannot be cancelled over the Internet."

4.       When I finally drove to an AT&T store in frustration, an employee used their phone to connect me to an actual human being, who informed me that she could not cancel the service as she could not "verify" my request. She promised that her manager would phone me, on my own line, within 30 minutes to take care of the problem. I never received the phone call.

When the phone was finally turned off, I assumed that the message had finally made its way through AT&T channels, and the account had been cancelled because Mrs. Smith is deceased, and AT&T has been asked repeatedly to terminate service. To find that AT&T considers this bill to be valid, despite its being accrued after Mrs. Smith's passing and despite repeated requests to cancel service, is astonishing in the extreme.

This is not a valid debt. If necessary, I can, and will, provide the name of the attorney handling Mrs. Smith's trust, and allow her to conduct any further communication with AT&T.

I regret that you have been asked to waste your time in this endeavor.

Thank you."

I'm not kidding about the attorney. The estate attorney works for the same firm that employed my mom. She's not cheap, but she is very good. If I have to pay her to take care of this, I will, but it will tick me off. I mean. more than I'm already ticked off.

Let's see if we can finally lay this to rest, as it were.

Taking on the Phone Cops

"I cannot understand," I said to the poor, hapless young woman on the phone, "why it takes an act of Congress to shut off my mother's phone."

My mother died five months ago. Her oldest two children live hundreds of miles away, and her third has health issues including heart problems and a pacemaker. Thus, she chose her youngest, me, to be the trustee of her estate, since it was most likely that I would be alive, well and available when she passed away. (As a bonus, I only live two blocks away from her home.)

My Grandmother Henriette, my mother's mother, had Alzheimer's. After having to deal with all the legalities and mess of having the court declare her mother unable to manage her own affairs, and then appoint someone to do so, my mom made her choices about how she would handle putting her own affairs in order. She put my name on her bank account after my dad died and long before she worried that she might be going senile. She sold herself everything she owned and held it all in trust, and appointed me the successor trustee. As these things go, it has been as smooth and painless as it could be, with everything already set up the way she wanted it. I've had to make very few decisions.

Most of her accounts closed with just a notification from me. Some, including her utilities, transferred easily to her granddaughter, the current caretaker of her home. The phone, though, has been an ongoing headache.

I mean, how tough should it be? I wrote a form letter: "Mrs. Smith has passed away. Please close all accounts in her name." I paid all her bills as they came in, and sent the letter out with each one. Pretty simple, right?

Some of the businesses wanted to know, "Would you like this account transferred to your name?" A polite offer, to be sure, and useful for things like her electric bill. But, I am old school and I can't quite wrap my head around having three phones for the four people who live in my house; I do not need another phone, especially if it's a landline at a residence that I do not occupy.

Besides, we heard nothing from the phone company; we just got another bill a month later. A record keeping screwup, I thought. We called the automated phone number and left a voicemail telling them to close the account. When did it become impossible to talk to a human operator, anyway?

The next month, we got a nasty notice with the bill. So, we called the number, AGAIN, and left a message AGAIN, plus we went online, as the bill urged us to do, even giving us the web address. Once you get into the site, though, it informs you that you cannot disconnect a phone online. Excuse me? YOU referred me here!

By the third month, we were repeating all the steps again, my husband, myself, and my daughter, in case the call had to come from the number in question. Calling the number printed ON THE BILL for Customer Service took you to an automated system that hung up on me after I'd been on hold for too long, and informed my husband in a prerecorded voice when he called from his cell phone that "it is not possible to disconnect a line over the phone." What?

By the fourth month, the notices in the bill were getting increasingly hostile, and so were we.

Were they not checking ANY of the systems that THEY put in place? Did no one actually work at the phone company? Were they noticing that the only calls made on that line, for literally months, were to their own system? I mean, they're supposed to know things, right? There's supposed to be some level of monitoring, right?

By now, we're all pretty ticked off. My husband kept saying, "We have to actually go into the office," but the thing is, there is no local office of AT&T. So, one day, I went to an AT&T store. At least there, there would be humans.

We walked in, my husband and I, and the employee chirped, "May I help you?" I surely hoped so, I told him, and explained the problem. "Oh. We can't do that. We don't have access."

*&^%($#!@+&!!!!!!

"We can call, though."

"Is it a different number? Because, believe me, we've already called."

Yes, he assured me, he could get a human on the phone. So, I went with him to the phone, waited while he went through elaborate steps that all but took a DNA sample, and he handed me a phone playing the melodious muzak of "hold." Soon, a human actually picked up.

"With whom am I speaking?" she trilled. I know they're trained - in fact, required - to ask this first, but it would be so nice, and timesaving, if they let me tell them what I need. Instead, I gave her my name.

"Thank you. And what is the telephone number?" Sigh. I gave it to her. Tiny pause, then an irritated voice: "I don't show you as the account holder."

"No. It's my mother's phone."

Irritated voice again. "I'm sorry, I can't - "

Enough. I need to stop you from being helpful so I can tell you why I've called. "She's been dead for months. I've been trying to turn her phone off since then. Her name is..." and I provided the name that should now be on her screen.

"I don't show your mother as the account holder, either."

Oh, for the love of Mike! "Well, my dad's been dead for 25 years," I told her, then provided his name.

"Oh. Yeah, that's it. I guess they never got around to changing it." No, I guess "they" didn't.

Then I explained what I wanted, and the steps I'd taken to get there. "I know that this isn't your fault, and that you don't make company policy, but I'm understandably irritated by now."

"I understand. Did you go online?"

I did not say, "Did you listen?" I said, "Yes. More than once." I then repeated that we'd also phoned and sent in a letter.

"What address did you send it to?" I told her. "Oh. That's the wrong address."

"Well, if someone had let me know that, I would happily have mailed one to the correct address. Do you have that address, so I can mail another one?" She did not. "Did anyone notify me that the address was incorrect? Did they forward it to the correct department? Has anyone made any attempt to communicate with me at all?"

"I don't have that information. I can't access that."

"Can you transfer me to someone who can?" She could not.

We went around and around, me trying not to bite the girl's head off, and her becoming more flustered. I did fairly bite her head off when she said, "I can take care of the bill. We'll have to prorate it..."

"NO. There is NO money actually owing. I notified you within DAYS of her death. I PAID the final bill in full. There is NO money owing at all."

"No, ma'am, I can reverse most of these charges, but you'll still owe from the day she died until the day you first notified us." Good gravy.

"OK. Fine. That'll be maybe a week." Far be it from me to keep the company from getting ten bucks or so.

At one point she said, "I don't think you're lying to me, ma'am. It's just that I have policies I have to follow." That's the problem. Do you ever feel that you're lost in the morass of a huge conglomerate that has lost touch with reality and humanity?

Poor kid, she couldn't do what I needed. I couldn't do what I wanted. How is that even possible? It's a friggin' PHONE, not the nuclear launch codes or somebody's life support.

"With every other account, I got, 'So sorry for your loss,' and then they cancelled the account."

"We really are sorry for your loss, ma'am!" She was sounding shrill and slightly distraught.

Sorry. That ship has sailed. You do not get to be sorry for my loss unless it's one of the first things you say to me.

She tried, repeatedly, to transfer me to her manager, who was "on another line," and finally told me that he'd call me at home. Poor kid, I told her several times, "I know this is not your fault." But I am starting to contemplate drastic action, like sending in another letter, but this time sprinkling talcum powder in the envelope, so it will get noticed and sent up the chain of command. I won't do it, but oh, my gosh!

Her manager never called. They finally turned off the phone, but the nasty note with the bill tells me that it was "suspended for non-payment."

AT&T, here's a Handy Business Tip: you may not want to threaten for months on end before you finally take action. Don't be hysterical and cut it off if payment is a day (or even a month) late, but we're headed into month six. You lose some credibility when people can mooch for months.

Assuming that they want to mooch. Assuming that they haven't tried to sever the relationship repeatedly over those months. You are the equivalent of a stalker ex, AT&T. Know when to let go!