Yes, it is the company’s fault. They are knowingly taking advantage of people
I know about this. My grandmother, who died a few years back at the age of 99, was in the same boat.
I knew she had antiquated phones in her home, but I had no idea they were still owned by the phone company until her eyesight got poor enough so that she asked for help with her bills (she was still sharp as a tack, but couldn’t see well enough to read anymore).
The phone company knows that there are plenty of elderly people who have had their phones since the days when you had to lease them from the phone company, and knows that some of them are unaware either that they can buy their own phones now (maybe because, like my grandmother, their English isn’t that great and they have a tough time dealing with customer service people over the telephone), or that replacing a phone is a trivial undertaking, like another grandparent, who didn’t replace his phones because he thought that would mean he’d have a new phone number, and he didn’t want to change his number (I wouldn’t be surprised if the phone company at least encouraged this belief so they could keep leasing his phones to him).
The phone companies are flat out stealing from these people. They’re cheating them. It should be illegal. The FCC, or whoever regulates this stuff, should see that (a) those elderly people who still have leased phones be given those phones and (b) be given a refund of everything they paid over, say, 200% of the value of the phone.
Thieving bastards.
Dr. Drake says he’s no expert in business ethics – you know what? The idea of “business ethics” is bullshit. Ethics is ethics. Ripping off old, easily confused people is wrong. It’s stealing. The ethics of it aren’t different because a business does it. It’s no different from those con men who will repave your driveway with some “extra” blacktop left over from a job in the neighborhood, and then just spray oil on it. It’s a con, no matter who’s doing it. Just because a business has shareholders and officers and so on doesn’t make it any better than your garden-variety scam artist.
In my state, an executor is legally bound to settle ALL debts which they know exist, and to perform “due diligence” in investigating and settling any debts they suspect exist. To not do so is either misdemeanor or felony fraud, depending upon the amount involved.
So if the law is similar in his estate, and he becomes the executor, it’s not good advice to duck the debt. YMMV.
Good old Ma Bell. I remember now why she was hated so much. Leasing phones, charging extra for touchtone, charging extra for 2 phones. Ma Bell ruled with an iron fist for a long time. It took a 10 year court battle to bring her down.
I called QLT today. After going thru the menu dance & being on hold for 15 minutes, I finally got thru to a customer rep. I explained the situation & told the guy that this had to end. He told me to disregard the latest bill & that he would send a cancelation notice.
My dad has had the same phone number since 1958. I guess it was just ingrained in my parents to pay the phone lease.
My grandmother had an old rotary phone up in her bedroom AND a regular touch tone phone in her living room. (Although it probably still had the rotory dialing system on it) Lord knows why.
My mother doesn’t throw out things that aren’t broken. She just stopped using a computer she has had since 1984, because she couldn’t get it repaired anymore (she basically used it for word processing and the household budget). She has a rotary dial phone in her bedroom that she has had for pretty much my whole lifetime, which means since 1967, more or less. She also has a phone in the kitchen with a built-in, digital answering machine. She has a landline, and no voicemail service. She has a prepaid tracfone, but only turns it on when she needs to make a call; it’s probably ten years old, and she doesn’t know how to use the text function.
I asked her once if she still leased the rotary desktop phone, hoping she wouldn’t ask me what I was talking about. Turned out that when Bell broke up, my parents switched long distance carriers to one with a better deal for their area, and they got a notice that they could no longer lease the phone; they had to buy it or return it. They bought it.
They had a touch-tone phone in the kitchen, which they also bought. That one died, and they bought a cordless phone-- my father wanted one, but my mother never liked it. I have no idea what happened to it. She may have left it in the house when she sold it after my father died. I’m sure she didn’t throw it out, though, not if it worked.
My mom’s aunt was in this situation … just paying the bills for decades without remembering what they were for. When my mom discovered it, she called the phone company and reported it. The phone company suggested she return the phones, and my mom said they were long gone and suggested the phone company accept the enormous amount of money they’d already received as payment in full, and not try to get any more from an old woman. They sheepishly agreed.
Back in the 90s, we discovered that a relative was in the same situation. They actually still had the phones, but when we tried to return them were told “the phone company doesn’t lease phones anymore.”
I’m with RNATB on this one - businesses should be under no obligation to cancel contracts of their own volition. There are a few problems with this, such as where you draw the line, the costs that would incur, the fact that some people may still be using the phones. It’s up to the consumer to change the agreement should they wish to. It’s only unethical if you called the phone company to try to cancel the lease and they spun some line about you having to change your phone number in that case (or some other bullshit designed to get you to stay).
My parents (far from elderly at the time) had a similar sort of situation with their old TV. They first got a TV together in the early 80s, when apparently TVs could be quite unreliable and not last very long. As such they rented a set (which of course worked perfectly for 20 years), but never got round to replacing it when TVs became cheap and reliable. I worked out they had spent something like £1,600 renting this TV! Was the rental company wrong to let this go on? No, they were providing an agreed service for an agreed price. If there was some clause that you got to keep the TV after x years, the price would have gone up for everybody.
