ArcaMax

Verizon continued to bill and last week we received a notice that the bill had been turned over to a collection agency. Are you able to help or should we just swallow our spite and pay the bill? -- Maggie DeLoach, Sunnyvale, Calif.

A: Don't give up, Maggie! Companies create immense systems meant to trap you -- and your money -- and to leave you in despair. Oh, of course that's not the intent. But that's what they do. You can't let 'em grind you down.

You're a good mother to be paying your daughter's phone bill and to be fighting this for her. As a parent myself, I can barely contain my anger when someone tries to take advantage of my son or daughter. I'm also furious when they go after my retired parents. But I digress.

I can see that you've kept a beautiful, fully annotated paper trail. Good work! You have every piece of correspondence between you and Verizon. Cellular carriers are notorious for wanting to do everything by phone, which gives you no opportunity to collect a paper trail. You saw right through that. Nice work.

I can also see that you tried to advocate this yourself. You contacted your local Better Business Bureau and a newspaper action line, hoping someone would help. You wrote to everyone you could. Nothing worked.

You could have paid off the small amount of money Elizabeth owed and been done with it. But you stuck to it on principle. Your daughter canceled her account and followed Verizon's instructions. Somehow, the system kept billing her. Then, despite your efforts to clear the matter up, Verizon forwarded her bill to a collections agency.

A lot of folks panic when they see a Verizon collection bill. But not you. When you reached out to me, you were indignant but calm. And after reading the details of your case, so was I.

There's one thing you didn't try: Sending a brief, polite email to one of the executive contacts at Verizon. I list the names, numbers and email addresses on my nonprofit consumer advocacy site, Elliott.org.

I love the resolution on this one because you did it yourself. You sent a letter to the company's president about your Verizon collection bill. A staff member contacted you and agreed to zero out the debt and to contact the credit agency to clear your daughter's name. Problem solved!

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Christopher Elliott's latest book is “How To Be The World’s Smartest Traveler” (National Geographic). Get help by contacting him at http://www.elliott.org/help

© 2020 Christopher Elliott.