Verizon once thought ‘forever’, apparently, but I think there must be some law or precedent saying they’re wrong. At minimum, they’re billing someone for services they didn’t receive, on account of them being deceased, and that can’t be entirely kosher. So what’s the limit here? How long can they draw blood from the stiff?
Correct me if I am wrong, but they can bill dead people for as long as they want but they also won’t get any money from it if the family refuses to play along. Assets get passed to the estate after someone dies and businesses can’t just get money from it because they say they are owed it. Nothing happens to a dead person who doesn’t pay a Verizon bill because they don’t need credit anymore. Credit card companies often try to scare family members into paying the final bills but they don’t have to. People don’t pass debt to their heirs in the U.S. so let them bill away forever if they want to.
I don’t think that link shows what you think it shows.
It refers to a woman who purchased and set up services for her mother-in-law. The services were never provided to her satisfaction, so she disputed the bills. Then her mother-in-law died, and she told them to cancel the whole thing.
Verizon never billed a dead person. They billed the daughter-in-law who ordered the services in the first place (and put them on her credit card).
It sounds like the services were never actually working, which is a valid argument against paying for them, but the fact that the intended recipient died doesn’t really have anything to do with it.
iamthewalrus(:3=: Interesting interpretation. So the fact the intended recipient is dead really has nothing to do with anything?
Shagnasty: That’s more interesting.
Well, did Verizon have a contract with the dead woman? If I buy a car for someone and they die, can I just tell the finance company to piss off?
It has nothing to do with the contract made between two other parties. How do you interpret it?
A workmate of mine went on long term sick leave and died alone at home. Because he was somewhat of a hermit anyway, and routinely refused to answer the phone. Eventually, the company assumed he wasn’t returning to work and was in the process of trying to terminate his employment by written communication when his estramged family eventually found him dead on his home.
He had been.there for several months and because of the decomposed state his body was in, the exact cause of death could not be determined- more importantly, they couldn’t establish the date of death, so the coroner recorded it as the date he was found (this is standard apparently).
All of his creditors were therefore able to claim (against the estate) charges such as line rental, rent etc for the months he had been lying there dead.