Funny Money

Funny I got this phone call yesterday from a fan but not the kind you think. Usually when I get phone calls from 800 or 888 numbers I don’t answer them and let the voicemail take over. But yesterday, I couldn’t let this particular voicemail go unnoticed.

This collection agency has been calling me for the past couple months. You'd think that after the first dozen failed attempts of trying to recover the $79.80 they'd stop. No, they just had somebody else try calling.

What happened was when my cell phone carrier merged with another wireless carrier; somewhere in the switch to the new billing system $79.80 somehow got scraped off the old carrier’s bill and went into collections. Now I really don’t think it is my fault that they didn’t just leave the $79.80 on my bill which would’ve got paid but instead it went over to collections.

When I got this voicemail that was in a threatening tone of voice, I had to call back to mess with the hothead who left it. I dialed the 800 number, gave them the reference number for my bill, and they connected me with the mad voicemailer.

He answers and demands me to tell him when I am going to pay the $79.80. I asked him to run through his spiel about "this is an attempt to collect a debt...this is being recorded...” If the mad voicemailer who makes a little more than minimum wage is going to be a hothead over 80 bucks, I want it recorded.

"It's $80 dollars. Do you really have to leave me a threatening voicemail everyday?" I asked.

"You have owed us this debt since January 2008 and when did you plan on taking care of it?" the collector said in a snooty voice.

"Well maybe if you stopped harassing me over 80 bucks I'd just send it off in one of the payment envelopes I receive on a weekly basis, but you keep harassing me. You leave long, demanding messages and I call back and we argue over the debt which I don’t quite understand. And our little arguments cost me airtime that could be better spent on something like this very debt. It's not my fault the merging of two cell companies left me in collection status."

Now I am starting to get underneath the collector's skin.

"It's $79.80 and how did you plan to take care of this today?"

"I don’t. How much do you make an hour?"

"That's none of your business sir. Now how are we going to resolve this matter?"

"We're not going to resolve anything today. So let's see, I'd say you make $10 an hour. You've been calling me for months over $80 and I'm sure that your company has spent at least 8 hours trying to recover this debt. That's $80 right there. If you hound me this much for this measly amount of money, I'd hate to see what a real ass you can be to somebody who owes hundreds or thousands."

I ended the call while I was ahead. I mean really, is it worth harassing somebody over $80? I went and dug up one of the envelopes they had sent me that had a return envelope. I took $80 out of my Monopoly game and stuffed it in the return envelope with the bill.

I could pay it but that would mean sacrificing something like a bag of groceries or diapers to pay this bill so I sent them some funny money. On the bill I wrote “credit my cell phone account the 20 cents.”

© Mike McDonnell 2008