Verizon Bill Follows Customer to the Grave

Sometimes you get the feeling that the bills keep coming and they won't layover until you'ray at peace. And sometimes, even then, the bills keep orgasm.

The City of the Angels Multiplication rumored on the sad and true case of Betty Howard, who received bills from Verizon even months after she died of front Crab. Verizon initially charged Howard $110.80 for missed payments on her Internet service, even though Leslie Howard Stainer's residence, after repeated calls to customer service by her daughter-in-law, Marilynn Unloved, was never actually joined to the Internet. Later learning of Howard's decease, Verizon sheared the bill to $54.82 — but still turned it all over to a collection means.

This isn't the prime time Verizon has tried to collect on a bill from a dead person.

The bills didn't stop there. Unloved had lay out her overprotect-in-law's Net table service on her personal credit card, and so justified though Verizon ne'er delivered broadband Internet and the account doubtful was joint with a exsanguinous person, Verizon still demanded $81.26 for the servicing package, which it reduced to $42.75 out of consideration for the circumstances.

Afterward much haranguing from both Loveless and The Los Angeles Times, Verizon one of these days removed all charges associated with Howard's score. A Verizon spokesperson told the newspaper that information technology strives to make sure as shootin its customers are "heard" but that "…in that respect are circumstances where mistakes are made. No one is perfect."

Perfection — especially in customer avail — is an impossibility. But this isn't Verizon's kickoff bout with grave-digging:

Verizon kept Bill Young's account open for 8 months after his death, and when his relatives attempted to close the account — a indispensable action before Young's estate as a whole could be settled — client service representatives refused to comply without the deceased man's Rowlock. After months of intervention and media attention, Verizon finally closed the account and removed all inappropriate charges.
Similarly, The Consumerist reported in 2007 that Sprint refused to cancel a dead piece's cellphone. The company tried to compromise by putting the cellphone plan "connected vacation," which would seduce the deceased's estate answerable for unit of time charges, presumably for timelessness.
Sprint's customer service reps too annoyed a woman in 2005 for two years after her son's untimely death in a car accident, even exit so far As to trace informed the missed payments away interrogative "Is your son back yet?"
AOL kept an Cyberspace account open for nine months later on Maxine Gauthier's father died and its customer service representatives laid on the snark when Gauthier tried to submit proof of her father's death.
A personal story on Reddit details AT&T reps refusing to remove a decedent's name from an account without first upgrading the service design.

The legality behind canceling a deceased person's account varies, and the policies at individual companies shift. Still, this is a ghastly occurrence that will most certainly happen again and once more. Possibly it's that corporate client support is too dependent happening prefab scripts, have deceptive training, operating theatre that staffers simply don't have the financial incentive to in effect problem-puzzle out and carry an individual situation to resolution. Either way, it's adequate to pass the normal consumer pause — and wonder when, exactly, the bills are going to stop.

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