they can defend it by saying that she's had the option to end her lease for the past 40 years and hadn't done so until recently. Is it really the phone company's responsibility to end leases that make them money?
Maybe so, but it was Grandma that had been writing the check for 40 years without investigating other possibilities. If she feels swindled, then it's her own fault.
On the other hand, rotary phones aren't exactly common these days. So maybe she kept paying because she really liked her old phone. You don't just throw away forty years, ya know?
thats not fair at all. At&T is supposed to check all its customers bills to make sure they aren't doing something like this? I don't think so. She should read her bill. If anything AT&T was just serving their customer, THIS IS THE CUSTOMER'S FAULT.
Are you crying a river for people in credit card debt? Probably not you consider it a willful decision for the most part, this was also one. Unless she never left the house she knew there were knew phones and she knew that she could get them for $100 or less. Since when is ignorance mean that there is greed.
It seems to be a true story, but the rental fees were less than what the grandchildren believed. The rental is billed quarterly, although the phone bill arrives monthly.
That's not exactly a bargain, but the long term total seems to have been closer to $2000 than $14000 (rentals were much cheaper in the past).
More like American b*tching at it's finest going by the reaction of her adult children.
The phone company was offering an optional service that the customer never decided to cancel. It's not like she moved out of that house 40 yrs ago and was still getting billed for telephone service there or something.