She insisted I owed the cell phone company over $300 and I had broken the two year contract. “No, no, no!” I said, “That’s not true. When the rep called me offering me another contract I told him ‘No thanks’ and to discontinue my services. The rep did not accurately record the details.”
I further insisted if the phone calls continued I was going to go to court and sue for harassment due to the fact I was retired and had nothing else to do but read and write. I went to court and registered my complaint. We settled out of court and I recently received and accepted a check for the agreed upon settlement amount.
Now here’s the rub! No sooner had I cashed the settlement check, yet another collection agency called me regarding the $300 bogus bill I had with the cell phone company. At this point, I blame the cell phone company for dumping all of its “no pay” accounts on the un-suspecting, and perhaps gullible, collection agencies.
I call the collection agency gullible because they apparently did not get enough information from the cell phone company. For example, the cell phone company may have been notified I had died or asked for the phone to be disconnected before renewing a contract etc., information not passed onto the collection agency.
At this time, I am contemplating either taking the second collection agency to court or going straight for the cell phone company for what I consider disgraceful attempts to establish yet another American “Stick’em up!” cottage industry. I will use money from the settlement check as a retainer if the lawyer does not want to do a “pro bono” or whatever it is called. I may even ask the first and second collection agencies if they want to join me in a class suite against the cell phone company. I don’t know how I will handle this situation at this time. As I said, I have nothing to do but read and write.
I am still appalled reading a few months ago a diary a mother wrote about a collection agency garnishing her son’s check during the time he was going through a divorce. Most people going through a divorce know how broke you can be and most recently reading how some collection agencies intimidate the older community with threats of taking them to court.
As always,
BB
P.S. Somewhere along the way a person in a position to know told me the biggest complaint regarding cell phone bills was the one about the cell phone companies saying the customer broke the contract.
