TL/DR: Company claims a charge from my bill that once was optional is now mandatory. I cancel the service, company keeps a credit on my account and claims I have to request a refund to get my money back for services I will never receive.

I recently went through this with a regional telecom for my area whose name rhymes with SentryHell. I know I am one of the last people to still have a landline, but I only kept the line for 911 and alarm monitoring services. Because the only calls I actually get on that line are from people who want to sell me extended warranties for cars and optional Medicaid insurance plans, I stripped all the optional telecom services to the bare minimum, or so I thought. I was still being charged an extra fee each month for Touch Tone service. When Touch Tone first came out it was a big deal because it was so much faster to dial numbers. You just heard a short tone instead of waiting for a dial to turn and generate the correct number of pulses on the line to tell the phone company's switch what number you had entered next. It was ok to charge extra for it then because it was an optional upgrade, required new phone hardware, and was considered a convenience. That was in the 1970s.

I told the company's representative to remove the Touch Tone service and that I had an old pulse dial rotary phone that I would hook up to the line. That is when I was told that the company's systems did not support pulse dialing anymore. Ok, fine. I'll keep using my Touch Tone equipment. Just remove the charge. The company representative said he couldn't do that because it was a mandatory extra charge. I argued that the company could not fairly charge extra for a basic service that was the only way to access their systems. He said there was nothing he could do. I replied there was something I could do, namely cancel my service. At that point, I had been a customer for just over 20 years and had finally had enough. (Maybe someday I will post about my first experience with this company, being overcharged more than $2,000 my first year because they kept putting me on the wrong calling plan and finally having the public utilities commission order them to refund my money - that was fun!)

When I cancelled, it was soon after paying for the next month's service in advance. That landline was the only service I was receiving from them. I was told I would get a refund when I cancelled the service. A month went by with no refund check. When I called, I was told I had a credit on my account and had to request a refund. A credit? On a closed account that will never get any new services? Really? I was also told that it could take up to 60 days to issue a refund. Again, really? If I took 60 days to pay my bill, my services would be shut off. When I made this point and asked why they should get the benefit of keeping my money in their account for 60 days, I was told that "it is their process."

I was sorely tempted to start researching the consumer protection statute to make a point by showing them an example of the litigation process, but then life happened. I got a check 3 weeks after my call. Good riddance, SentryHell.