After having a cell phone with the same company for nearly five years, I called last month to shut it down. We don’t use it enough to justify the cost. I was told that it would have to remain active for the remainder of my billing period, which was nearly at the end of the month. Irritating, but okay, I accepted that. I asked for a confirmation number, and was airily told that I didn’t need one, I would get a notice and final bill in the mail.

Riiiiight.

This morning I opened an envelope from them, naively expecting it to be said notice and final bill. Well, it was a bill all right, and it noted the exactly-two-dollars of chargeable long-distance calls last month… as well as a charge for a “monthly service plan May 29 to Jun 28”. No indication that I’d canceled the service at all.

When I called them up and asked why, they said they had no record of me calling to cancel the service, and what was the name and extension number of the operator I’d talked to? The operator hadn’t given me any extension number, and I hadn’t paid any attention to her name, so it shouldn’t have surprised me that they didn’t have any record of it.

I think the fellow got the idea that I was fairly ticked. He offered to back-date the (new) cancellation order to May 28th, which should void the bill. I again asked for a confirmation number. Oh, they don’t use confirmation numbers (no surprise, as it would make it easy to hold them accountable), but he offered to give me his name (“Gidney” — no, that’s not a typo, that’s exactly how he spelled it, I made certain of it) and extension number. I also made extensive notes on the call, something I should have done for the first one.

I’m betting that they’ll either “lose” this one too, hoping that I’ll make the mistake of using the phone so they can justify billing me for another month or two (which isn’t going to happen), or just “forget” to send me an updated bill and then charge me a late-fee for not paying my two-dollars-plus-taxes on time. Any takers?

[UPDATE, July 1st: they didn’t send an updated bill, but I fixed them. I called and got the final amount, and paid it before the due-date. As far as I can tell, we’re rid of them now.]