A Love Story: Phone Company Deletes Cherished Voicemail, But Technicians Get It Back.

Stan Beaton reacts when hearing his late wife's voice again.
A voice mail recording she made before her death was
deleted, but technicians eventually recovered it.  

Stan Beaton's wife died in 2003.

It comforted him a little that he kept his wife's voice on the home voice mail.

But recently, technical work by his telecom firm, Virgin Media, deleted the voice mail, and it was thought that it was permanetly deleted.

Beaton, 68, of Mirfield, West Yorkshire, England, was devastated by the loss of that snippet of his wife's voice, the BBC reports. He was initially told the voice was "lost forever."

"I've always resisted changing companies because whenever I mentioned that my wife's voice was our voicemail message and would it be retained and each company said no, so that's why I never changed.

Sadly, it disappeared. I was absolutely devastated by it, but also extremely angry......I just could not tell people how it affected me at that time. It really did devastate me."

But technicians at Virgin Media began to poke and prod and do all that alchemy with computer systems that tech geeks do, and got the voice mail with Beaton's wife back.

Given how a lot of big telecom companies aren't exactly awesome at customer service these days, you have to appreciate Virgin Media's efforts.  After all, the chances of getting that voice mail back were slim.

Here's what Rob Evans, executive director of engineering at Virgin Media said:

"It was like searching for a needle in a haystack, however, a team of 11 engineers spent three days tracking it down."

Here's a nice video of Beaton with the newly recovered voice mail message. What his late wife says is as mundane as possible, but given the importance to Beaton, also incredibly profound.


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Dying Isn't Enough To Get You Out Of Your Cell Phone Contract

Maria Raybould said she even brought her dead
husbands ashes into a Wales T-Mobile store to prove
that his phone contract should be canceled, to no avail.  

A man named David Raybould, 57, died on August 29 in Wales.

His son showed up at a local T-Mobile store to cancel Raybould's cell phone contract, figuring that would mean one less thing for his grieving mother to worry about.

Hah! It's a cell phone company you're dealing with, you moron! 

As such, it's a perfect opportunity to make a family's life miserable.  The son should  have never assumed this would be easy.

T-Mobile demanded a death certificate proving the death. OK, fair enough, they showed it to T-Mobile

But ever since, the family has been getting bills, and threats that the debt will go to collections if they don't pay up for Raybould's cell phone bill, that should have been canceled in August.

Raybould's wife, Maria, has shown up at the store with her husband's death certificate, the funeral bill, the bill from the crematorium, even her husband's ashes to prove that David was indeed deceased, says Wales Online. 

Says Maria Raybould, according to Wales Online:

"They just don't seem to understand. I have tried and tried to get it through to them. The contract needs to stop. How much clearer can I make it to them? What more can I do? How dare they put me and my sons through this after all we have been through already?"

Well, Maria, T-Mobile is a major company. They have to make money to keep the shareholders happy. Even if that means extracting money from a dead person and torturing his widow. Profits have to be made. You should be happy they are um, contributing, to the economy.

Or something.

T-mobile blames a lag in an automated process to end the contract that is causing the bills and threatening letters to go out.

But just how hard is it to pull the plug on a contract. Go into the computer and hit the delete button or something, Gawd!

T-Mobile said the contract has been cleared, the Rayboulds don't owe any money and they're writing a letter of apology to Maria.

I have no idea if they were going to do that, or because of the negative publicity. Still, I have to wonder how many other people are going through this with deceased relatives and their phone bills.

I'm just glad we didn't have to go through this after we had a death in the family back in August.

AT&T Sues Small Firm For $1.15 M Over Fraud It Didn't Commit

Here's this week's awful, greedy corporate lawsuit.

In 2009, phone hackers got into the system of a 14-employee company called Todd Tool and Abrasives Systems in Ipswich, Mass and racked up close to $900,000 charges on the firm's phone lines in a few days, according to the Salem (Mass.) News.

In 2009, someone at Todd Tools' phone carrier, Verizon, noticed that Todd Tools' phone usage, which usually amounts to a $700 monthly bill, suddenly went to more than $200,000 in four days.

 AT&T Sued a business for fraud
that it did not perpetrate.

Verizon figured fraud, yanked Todd Tools' ability to make international calls until the hacking was fixed and waived the big bill, as was the decent things to do. End of story, right?

Well, in comes AT&T. Todd Tools owner Michael Smith said he never had a contract with AT&T, but the hackers used some sort of "dial around" that used AT&T's system.

Even though Smith had nothing to do with the fraud, AT&T sued him for $1.15 million, the cost of the hackers' bill plus interest.

According to The Salem News, AT&T said it was entitled to the money because Smith should have had a better, more hack- proof phone system. Also, even though Smith wasn't perpetrating the fraud, AT&T said since their system was used, Smith was on the hook for the cash.

So, AT&T was willing to drive a small company  out of business over a fraud that originated in Somalia. I'm sure AT&T didn't really lose $1 million, but hey, if you can get some extra cash from some poor sucker, why not?  And maybe Smith should have had more hack proof equipment, but shouldn't AT&T have had the same? And if Verizon was able to figure out a fraud was going on and pull the plug, shouldn't AT&T have detected it too?

I'm  sure there's a legal basis for AT&T's lawsuit, but was there an ethical basis as well?

As always in these cases, AT&T  beat a hasty retreat when this situation started making the news. But how many small businesses is AT&T killing in other lawsuits that don't make the news? After all, these phone scams must be a dime a dozen.

But the "nice" people at AT&T said their offer to drop the suit is contingent on Smith dropping his counter suit, according to The Salem News. So, they put the poor guy through the wringer, cost him at least $30,000 in legal bills and almost killed Todd Tools, and Smith is supposed to say it's OK?

I'm glad I don't have AT&T as my phone carrier, but knowing them, they'll probably sue me for $1.15 million for exercising my First Amendment rights to criticize them.

Anything to make a buck, right?

Hating the Texter

I found a little item below of the type of person I hate the most. It's a recording of a voice mail message left by a young woman who seemed to not like her experience at some place called the Alamo Drafthouse.

Apparently, the Austin, Texas business shows movies, and does not allow texting and phone use during the films. Seems like a pretty reasonable rule, if you ask me.

Well, our young woman is steamed, steamed that she got thrown out of the Alamo Drafthouse for texting during a movie. She has the right to text, you see, even if it totally bothers everybody else trying to watch the movie.

The young woman is the type of person I just love to despise. Her wishes trump everybody else's. I wonder what she thinks, if she's aware there's close to a million people now who have heard her bitchy whines.

Listen for yourself in the video below (which just has her words) Caution: Her language is NSFW and not for the little kiddies scattered about:

Woman Yakked 16 Hours on "Quiet Car?"

Meet Lakeysha Beard, who, according to media reports, sat on the quiet car of an Amtrak train in Oregon recently.

Lakeysha Beard, the alleged Amtrak
yakker extraordinaire

The quiet car is meant for people who don't want to listen to cell phone calls. So none are allowed. According to television station KOMO, Lakeysha decided the quiet car was the perfect place to hold a loud, 16-hour cell phone conversation.

Sixteen hours! Who can possibly talk that long? Well, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.  did in December  during a filibuster, but that's OK. He was on the Senate floor, which is a far, far, louder cry than an Amtrak quiet car.

I also want Lakeysha's cell phone. The battery lasted 16 hours? Wow! It's a super phone.

Anyway, she supposedly got aggressive on the train when fellow passengers told her the shut the &*@$ up. Lakeysha complained that she felt "disrespected" by passengers' complaints and the fact that she got arrested.

All this will be sorted out in court, and we're really yet to hear her side of the story.

But if Lakeysha's tale is true, stay away from her. She'll talk your ear off, that's for sure.