Death no excuse to stop paying Verizon bills

Verizon continues billing customer months after death
The phone company had been notified a few days after Betty Howard's death, but the bills kept coming. The one in March — three months after she passed away — said she owed more than $110.

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Betty Howard was charged $110.80 by Verizon in March because she missed a few payments for her high-speed Internet service.

The fact that Howard had died three months earlier apparently wasn't a good enough excuse for not paying her bills.

This was the final insult for Howard's daughter-in-law, Marilynn Loveless, who'd been battling with the phone giant for months over what she termed broken promises and questionable bills, not to mention an inability to grasp that its former customer was no longer among the living.

"I don't like bullies," Loveless told me. "That's what this seemed to be. They bully you and bully you until they get what they want."

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-lazarus-20110531,0,1622097.column

It doesn't usually work, but sometimes it does. And it's all pure profit to them.

When they ask for her new address, give them the plot number at the cemetary.

unless their name was on the bills, too. Creditors have to go through probate with everyone else and can't try to stick you with their bills.

So legally I suspect she would be responsible for that particular debt. But the service that was originally contracted for, broadband internet, never worked even when she allowed Verizon to increase the level of services contracted for to include wireless phone and other services.

Frankly if I were her, I would expect a full refund of all charges ever paid since the contracted service was never available to her mother in law.

They will throw all kinds of shit on your bill and hope you don't notice.
There's a lot more reasons for their suckiness, but I can feel my blood pressure rising, so I better stop.

I have to pay my bills online. At least two of their local stores will likely have me arrested on sight, due to previous visits.

"Don't bother us with your silly little problems."

She was closing accounts for her brother who died. One copapny told her they could not close the account until he brought in a copy of the death certificate. She told the woman "He cannot make it in there because he is DEAD!" before she hung up on her.

The stress of dealing with the companies holding his accounts nearly killed her - there is either an epidemic of incompetence or "nonsense talkers" which is another strategy they use.

is in the article, which states that many of its customer service reps are overseas and often blindly follow mindless company scripts, hoping the customer and problem will just go away.

that explains it.

It is the Management. A company is a reflection on the way the people at the are running the company.

My guess is the Los Angeles Times could not come out with the real facts of the story if their life depended on it.