Call Kurtis: Wireless Money Tap
"I got really upset. But it's a good thing she was up here with me to help me because..." because at 83-years-old Alice Terry says she couldn't have handled the stress.
Her daughter, Kathlyn Lafferty, stepped in to stop Verizon Wireless from taking money out of her son's credit union account. She bought the phone for Stan in 2005.
Alice's son died in December of 2009, and when he did, Kathlyn went to a Verizon Wireless store, showed them her brother's death certificate, and closed his account.
"He never used the phone the last two years of his life, he couldn't. He couldn't hold anything, he couldn't feed himself, he couldn't do anything" says Kathlyn, Stan's sister.
Yet despite closing the account in January of 2010, Verizon continued to pay itself by taking money out of Stan's account using auto-pay. Kathlyn was handling her brother's estate.
Every time she saw another withdrawal for Stan's terminated account she called Verizon Wireless. But each time, she says her calls got her nowhere closer to solving the problem.
"And they kept telling me that wasn't their department, and call this number. I'd call that number and they said it wasn't their department, call this number" says Kathlyn.
She says this went on for the next 11 months. She sent faxes and made more calls, only rarely able to talk to a real person.
"And no one can answer any questions," she says.
Kathlyn called Verizon's treasury department, their communications office, and their customer service, yet the payments kept coming out. Finally in September, they closed his credit union account out of desperation -- then called us.
"I don't even want to deal with them anymore."
We got in touch with Verizon's corporate office. They investigated, saying it sounded like a disconnect between billing and Stan's credit union.
Four days later it all became crystal clear. Turns out that Stan had two Verizon accounts -- one wireless and one landline.
Verizon had continued billing for the landline. Looking back to her days as a business owner Alice says she would never have allowed this kind of chaos to happen to her valued-customers.
"I can't think of any instance where things were that messed up."
