Is It “Can’t” Or “Won’t”?

This was a good many years ago now. My husband’s phone bill had a spelling mistake. We never really paid any attention to it. It never really caused any issues… until it did, of course.

The mistake was simple — think “Rod William” instead of “Rod Williams” simple.

One day, we moved states and put in for mail redirection. Where I am from, mail redirections have to be EXACT, so the bill never got forwarded. In all that goes along with moving, it didn’t even cross our minds that the bill hadn’t arrived or been paid. Then, inevitably the phone got cut off. Once we realised, we were all set to fix it up, pay the bill, change our address, etc. But no, it can’t be that simple.

You see, to change the spelling mistake, we needed to provide proof of my husband’s correct name. But for any name change, they needed name change documents such as a wedding certificate or other official name change document, which he didn’t have as it was not a name change, just a spelling mistake. For some reason, his licence or passport was not good enough evidence. We asked what we could do to get this fixed up and they offered no help or resolution, just stonewalling that there was no possible way to fix the incorrect spelling.

Okay, cool. At this point, we were cranky. “Not going to help us with what should be a simple fix? We won’t pay the bill,” we told them.

They responded with details of the contract and our obligations, debt collectors, etc. My husband simply replied:

Husband: “But who are you going to go after?”

Employee: “You, of course.”

Husband: *Looking comically confused* “But my name is not Rod William, and I am not going to pay his bill. Good luck finding him. If you happen to send me my own bill, though, I would be happy to pay that.”

Oh, look! The spelling mistake was corrected immediately.