But my BlackBerry wouldn’t work in England, according to Verizon, which suggested I rent a “global” model for my trip. I did. But when the new BlackBerry arrived, it wasn’t able to send or receive e-mails. I spent most of my last day in New York not playing with my children — my number one priority before a 10-day trip — but sitting in a Verizon store, where one person after another tried to solve the e-mail problem, with no success. But, everyone assured me, I would at least be able to use the BlackBerry to make and receive phone calls.

Guess what? In England, the device didn’t work at all. No e-mails, no phone calls in or out.

As a result, I incurred all kinds of expenses while I was in England, calling from pay phones and hotel phones to check my messages, to reach people I needed to see before I left, and to make sure my children didn’t feel neglected. Still, I missed at least one important appointment because I was unreachable. And that after I had spent at least eight hours dealing with the problem on my last day in the States.

Shouldn’t Verizon have to pay me for my time? Time, after all, is money, and Verizon deprived me of a lot of it.

Eventually, after I wrote several letters, one threatening to take the company to small claims court, Verizon offered me a $100 credit. Which is more than nothing, but doesn’t begin to compensate me for the time I spent trying to solve their problem.

The Verizon employees who tried to help me — but were unsuccessful — got paid for their time. I, who did nothing wrong (unless you count signing up with Verizon), got bubkes.

Imagine if companies were required to pay customers for their time. Service would improve in a heartbeat.

This would make (some) sense if the article was poorly written. But, invariably, articles are killed for reasons outside the writer’s control. For example, a newly hired editor decides to change a publication’s focus. Or the story is fine, but the photos aren’t good enough. (This happens more often than you’d think.) Is there any logic to making the writer pay, under these circumstances?

Here’s what about.com (which is owned by the New York Times) says under the heading “Kill Fee”:

Example: The magazine ended up going from 64 to 58 pages, and so they didn’t use my assigned article. However, they had promised me a kill fee of 25%, so my work wasn’t a total loss.

Logically, that’s equivalent to:

Example: The homeowner decided to move to a smaller house, so they didn’t really need the furniture I built for them. However, they agreed to pay me 25% .

Can anyone think of any other field where a professional is hired, performs a service, and then waits to find out if s/he’s going to be paid?

If you can, let me know.

I recently got a letter from the company, announcing changes to my prescription drug coverage.

The letter, which was dated August 28 (and which arrived on September 5) said:

“Starting September 1, 2009, prescriptions for some medications will be subject to quantity limits.”

The letter explained how those quantity limits would be instituted. “If you fill a prescription for a quantity that is greater than the limit for the prescribed medication, you will receive the limited quantity and pay the appropriate copay. If you choose to fill the prescription for the full prescribed quantity, you will pay the retail price for the quantity over the limit, in addition to the copay.”

There’s a lot more (I’ll spare you) about the changes.

Finally, the letter arrives at the explanation:

“FIC made these chances in order to provide enrolled members with the highest quality care and to conform to FDA standards for safety and dependability with regard to prescription drug usage.”

Uh, no. FIC made these changes to try to keep its prescription drug costs down. And that’s absolutely fine with me. (I’d like to see my rates — and everyone else’s rates — stop rising.)

So why couldn’t they say that. Something like: “Freelancers Insurance Company — a for-profit company — is attempting to lower its prescription drug expenses”?

Medical costs are out of control, and companies trying to rein them in should say so.

My father died in January. He left a small estate — perhaps $100,000, to be divided several ways.

Most of the money is in a brokerage account at Bank of America. It’s been seven months since his death, six months since my stepmother obtained the “letter testamentary” that allows us to proceed as co-executors, and still we can’t get Bank of America to transfer the funds from my Dad’s account to his estate. That’s the first, essential step if the estate is ever going to pay its bills (the funeral alone cost $12,500 — a rip-off we were powerless to resist).

Instead, Bank of America sends us applications. Ridiculous, incomprehensible applications, demanding information that we either can’t provide (because the questions don’t make sense) or shouldn’t have to provide (because the questions are intrusive). The applications relate to the “estate account” Bank of America requires us to open. Of course, we don’t really want to open an account — we want to close one. But merely sending the estate a check, apparently, is not an option for an esteemed national banking institution. There are many, many hoops for us to jump through first.

The applications begin by asking for the name of the account holder. My stepmother? Myself? It turns out, according to Bank of America, that the account holder is “the estate of Milton Bernstein.” Logical, except the next line asks for the account holder’s date of birth. (Would that, bizarrely, be my fathers’ date of death?) It gets worse: the next few lines demand the account holder’s “permanent physical address,” occupation, and — most ridiculous of all — marital status.

Sometimes, we find ourselves convulsed with laughter at the impossibility of answering these questions (marital status of an estate?). For permanent physical address, my stepmother suggested giving the address of the cemetery, and we both got giddy.

And there’s more: Bank of America demands to know the occupation, annual income, and net worth of each of the executors. My stepmother considers those questions an invasion of privacy; I consider them irrelevant. (What does my net worth have to do with Bank of America’s obligation to release my father’s hard-earned money to his hard-pressed estate?) A Bank employee insisted the SEC requires the information. If so, to paraphrase Dickens, the SEC is a ass.

Bank of America, I realize, has absolutely no incentive to close my father’s brokerage account. First, it will likely lose control of the $80,000 — unless, of course, my stepmother and I choose to reinvest it with Bank of America. Worse, it faces the risk of other putative heirs making a claim, subjecting the bank to litigation. Bank of America has every incentive to do nothing, for as long as it possibly can.

But sometimes, Bank of America’s demands make one or both of us burst into tears.

I am a lawyer and my stepmother is a paralegal with more than 20 years’ experience and — together — we can’t seem to fill out the forms to the banks’ satisfaction. Wasn’t my father’s death trauma enough?

Here’s why: 

ILD didn’t put up a fight. Didn’t even claim its charges were legitimate. Why should it? ILD’s business is helping other companies — in my case, a shadowy outfit called American eVoice — place charges on people’s home phone bills. On ILD’s website, it claims to gross more than $100 million a year from its “bill forwarding services” and brags about “maximizing collection rates.”

Some extraordinarily high percentage of its bills are for services nobody ordered. (If you don’t believe me, Google “ILD”; you’ll find countless stories about what the industry calls “cramming” — and I call stealing.) It’s a no-lose proposition for ILD. Some people never notice the fraudulent charges on their phone bills. Of those who do notice, some don’t bother to complain. Of those who do complain, some don’t get around to sending the faxes ILD requires before issuing refunds. Nice work if you can get it.

The solution would be for local phone companies to stop passing along these charges. But, under FCC rules, local phone companies are required to provide “third-party billing,” supposedly as a convenience to people who order products and services but don’t have credit cards. As a Verizon spokesman told me, “We legally have the obligation to put charges on a Verizon bill. We cannot deny them.” Sadly, he was telling me the truth.

So I went to the American Express website (specifically, the Investor Relations page, where there’s a list of top executives). Three or four clicks later, I had found the man I knew could help.

Judson C. Linville
President & CEO Consumer Services

But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t find an office phone number for Mr. Linville. And I figured that if I called the company’s main number, I would end up back in customer service hell, which was already feeling like my home away from home.

With nothing to lose, I clicked over to the AOL White Pages, and typed in (first name) Judson, (last name) Linville, and hit return. There it was: his home address and home phone number. (It helps, of course, that Judson Linville isn’t an everyday name. Just try finding Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx.)

I salivated: the home address and number of an executive of a company that had been torturing me for weeks. Should I call? Write him a letter and mail it? (Or even drop it off at his front door? His home is in a town I happen to spend time in.)

I asked friends what they thought. A few said I should go ahead and phone him. At least one said I should call at dinnertime; turnabout is fair play.

Others thought that calling him at home was a clear breach of etiquette, or ethics. I wavered, afraid to cross the line, although I wasn’t sure where the line was, or who had drawn it.

But then I remembered: American Express had been calling me at home, repeatedly. And they had even called a relative, who had nothing to do with the dispute, hoping to track me down.

So I picked up the phone and dialed Mr. Linville’s home. I left a polite message on his voicemail, asking him to call me from his office.

Would you have made that call? Or is the home of a “consumer services” executive somehow sacrosanct (unlike the home of a mere customer, of course)?

P.S. I still haven’t heard from ILD Teleservices.

Companies whose “phone tree” asks you to input all kinds of data (16-digit account number, nine-digit social security number, 10-digit home phone number) only to tell you, when you’re done, that the office is closed.

Companies that make you listen to long advertisements while you’re waiting for a representative.  If I’m already a customer, I shouldn’t have to listen to another sales pitch. Ever.

Worse: Companies that intentionally keep you on the phone long enough to play an advertisement.  The last time I called  to activate a Visa card, the recording said: “While we’re activating your card, we’d like to tell you about ____.” Cue long advertisement.  When it was over, the recording said, “Thank you.  Your card has now been activated.”  I don’t believe that the computer really needed all that time to activate my card.

Companies that mail you what they claim is important account information — they often put the words “Important Account Information” on the envelope — when what you’ll really find inside is just another advertisement.

Companies whose “phone tree” offers every option except the one you called about.  Last year, American Express asked me to call 800-525-3355 by December 22 if I wanted to receive a paper copy of my year-end summary of charges.  When I called, none of the countless “phone tree” options mentioned year-end summaries.  I had to guess and press, and guess and press, all the time knowing that if I guessed or pressed wrong, I’d be out of luck.

Companies that make you input all kinds of information in order to direct your call, then transfer you to a person who begins by asking you for the same information.  Shouldn’t the data you entered already be on the representative’s screen?

Companies that provide services you never asked for (and I don’t mean free ones).  On June 24, I received a letter from Verizon, my wireless carrier, listing the optional services I had ordered.  One of them was insurance, at $4.99 a month.  But I know I had declined the coverage.  How, I wonder, did the company decide to sign me up?  Was it hoping I wouldn’t notice — or wouldn’t take the time to object?  Either way — they win!

P.S. I still haven’t heard from ILD Teleservices.

When I opened my phone bill recently, I was surprised to see a $14.95 charge from ILD Teleservices, a company I’m pretty sure I’d never head of. When I called ILD, I was told that the charge was for an “800-number voice mail service.”

I explained that I had never signed up for an 800 number, and that no one in my family could have done so. That’s when the ILD representative pointed out, to my embarrassment, that I’d been charged the same amount every month for six months in a row.

(Guess what? I don’t always examine my phone bills.)

The representative agreed to give me credits for three months, but told me that if I wanted credits for the other three — a total of $44.85 — I would have to fax a letter to the company. (Note the incredibly arbitrary rule.) I hesitated. As the father of six-year-old twins and a writer with constant deadlines, I wondered whether sending the letter (and making the inevitable follow-up phone calls) was worth the trouble.

There was a time when I would have made as many phone calls as it took to set things straight. Back when I believed that if an error had been made, it ought to be corrected. End of story.

But these days, I think less about justice and more about my sanity. Do I really want to spend hours on the phone trying to recover $1.38 or $9.31 or even $44.85? Shouldn’t I learn to “let go of the little stuff” — not for the company’s sake, but for my own?

Then again, if people stop reporting billing errors, companies may realize they can get away with accidental overcharges. Or worse.

So, with a view to deterrence as much as enrichment, I wrote the letter and faxed it off. Let’s see if I get my $45 credit.

In the meantime, I’d like to know how you decide what to do about minor billing errors.

If you woudn’t call a company about $2, how about $20, or $200? Where do you draw the line? (And has your line moved as your income has one up or down, or as the circumstances of your life have changed?) Has the recession had an effect?

When you do pursue a billing error, is it just about the money? Or is it “the principle of the thing?”

If so: What principle?