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MIKE McCORMICK
A couple of weeks ago I wrote about my wife’s mom passing away at the age of 97. As she would have told you, “I’ve had a good life.”
She was a walking history book of the city of Shawnee.
We would take her for drives around town and she could tell you who lived in this house or that house or had this business and that business and a little about each of them.
Ruth may have been one of the most independent women I’ve ever known.
As I mentioned previously, she was affectionately known and called “Granny” by many.
She didn’t give up driving until she was 93 years old.
But one thing Granny had a little trouble with was her cell phone. As she grew well into her 90s, she was having memory issues and that’s surely understandable.
My wife Pat made it as simple as she possibly could for her mom to use her cell phone, putting only those most important numbers in as her contacts.
One time she lost or misplaced her phone for about eight or nine hours. Thinking we might never find it, we went to where she had gotten the phone to try and cancel it so she could buy a new one.
We found out then, though, she couldn’t cancel her phone with this company because she had forgotten the password and her driver’s license had expired.
Agreeably, we maybe should have helped remind her to write down the password when she got the phone.
Also, even though she was no longer driving, we should have taken her so she could renew her driver’s license as an ID source. Always renew your driver’s license, we learned.
After my wife placed her mom in a local facility due to her memory and other health issues at the age of 96, Ruth somehow lost her phone. It was gone, lost for good.
Again, Pat ran into the same problem with this phone company, trying to cancel out the phone but the phone company wouldn’t budge. Pat even was told about a location in Midwest City which she went after being told they could help her but came up with the same results.
All this time, Pat trying to explain she was the Power of Attorney for her mom and she had the papers she could send and show them to prove it.
Nope, didn’t make any difference. Pat wasn’t about to buy a second phone that her mom, by then 97, might also lose.
It was unbelievable. It wasn’t until after her mom passed away on Oct. 3 and Pat finally received an original death certificate that she could mail to the phone company were they going to cancel it.
In the meantime, Pat received another phone bill for $72 and it came after her mom had passed away. She sent the bill off with the death certificate.
There’s lots of lessons to be learned from this, but for sure there are some unreasonable and absurd policies these giant companies have.