tcm@ee.rochester.edu (Tom Maszerowski) (10/28/90)
Here's one I wouldn't have believed - I am a member of a Volunteer Fire Department in the Rochester NY area. My wife is the Deptartment Treasurer. Recently we received a huge bill from AT&T for a number of long distance calls from one of our two phone numbers and a house in the Buffalo NY suburbs. The bill amounted to over $250 for just the month of September. Preliminary investigation with the recipient revealed little, as she would not divulge the name of the caller. Our local Police Department recommended pursuing her as an accessory to petit larceny. Before we could do so, our telephone company, Rochester Telephone, revealed that there was a another "house" with the same number about a mile or so away. They had initiated service with the other customer about a year or so previous. The department had been receiving bills that seemed a bit large, but not extremely so, for a while but no one gave it much thought. It wasn't until the aforementioned young lady moved out of the LATA that the bills got out of hand. A phone call to the gentleman making the calls was interesting. It seems that his mother has been paying his bills, even though he doesn't live with her. His phone was cut off at least once before due to failure to pay. He simply assumed that when he never recieved a bill that his mother was paying them, and never gave it a second thought. AT&T and RTC will be pursuing him for payment; we are absolved of the cost for the long distance calls to the one number; but the charges he accumulated in the past we will have to eat as it would be difficult to prove he made them. RTC is again disconnecting him, we can only hope that no one else will be assigned our number.