In the spring of 2021, a person or persons unknown set up cable TV and internet service for an apartment in Chicago. That person or persons soon skipped out, leaving an unpaid bill that eventually worked out to be $192.72.
Happens all the time, I’m sure, and not just for cable bills. There’s no shortage of deadbeats in this world, people who want to cheat the system in one way or another. This particular incident would be unremarkable in the great scheme of things, given its relatively small grift.
Except that it came to ensnare me.
Fast forward to September 2022, when I got a letter from a collection agency in St. Paul, Minnesota: “We are trying to collect a debt that you owe to [cable company],” it said. “You are eligible to settle your account for 65% of the current balance. ... Please call our office ... if you wish to settle your account for $125.27.”
My first inclination was to ignore the letter. A case of mistaken identity, at best, and scamming, at worst. Like the frequent email notices I get saying I owe PayPal $432 for a Bitcoin purchase or $590 for a stereo system. It’s amazing how people get suckered into that sort of con.
But curiosity overcame that inclination, and I called to find out what in the Sam Hill was going on. I reached a nice woman who gave me the address associated with the Chicago cable/internet account and said it had been set up by someone using the name Joseph Rogers.
I explained to the nice woman that there are many other people named Joseph Rogers in this world, any one of whom may have set up the account in question and then skipped out, but that the Joseph Rogers who is me did not.
She apologized and suggested I contact the cable company to explain the situation and resolve the matter. She gave me the number for their fraud department.
Thus began several frustrating months in a rabbit hole.
After speaking with a fraud department representative, I submitted an ID Theft Claim Packet that included, along with various other details, mortgage and utility documents showing that while someone was setting up a Chicago account, I very clearly lived in Nashville. This, I thought, would end the matter.
But it cut no ice with the cable company. On Nov. 4, the collection agency sent me another letter, stating the cable company had provided information “verifying your responsibility for payment of the debt referenced in the Account Summary.”
In short: I told and demonstrated to the cable company that I didn’t owe the money. The cable company told the collection agency that I did. And the agency believed the cable company.
Few who know me would suggest that I am a patient man. But I called the collection agency again and, without yelling at all, asked why they insisted on hectoring me for money I did not owe.
I asked what, other than a name not unique to me, connected me to the account in question. The last four digits of a Social Security number, the woman I spoke to said.
I ask you this: Would the kind of person who skips out on debts use his own Social Security number?
Various calls by me followed over the rest of November and December, including one to the cable company again, during which I was told (threatened?) that my credit rating was at risk, and another to the Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, which transferred me to the cable company. On at least two occasions, I refiled the ID theft paperwork, which the cable company still found lacking.
Remember what I said about me and patience?
Finally, in January, a letter arrived from the cable company admitting that I wasn’t liable for the money. Victory at last!
But it still galled me that I’d had to invest so much time stuck in a loop.
It was clear from the start that, in the eyes of the cable company, it was my responsibility to prove that I had not set up the account. This conflicted sharply with my personal view, which was that it was the company’s responsibility to prove that I had.
That concept is perhaps best expressed in the familiar phrase “innocent until proven guilty.” Our system of justice is based on it: Defendants don’t have to prove they didn’t do something, the prosecution has to prove they did. I knew this even at a very young age, from watching Perry Mason on television.
Fortunately for Perry’s clients, someone else generally ’fessed up to the crime in a dramatic courtroom moment. If you’re reading, Chicago Joseph Rogers, I’ll take that confession now.
Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville.