When someone close to you dies, you expect to grieve, not spend weeks fighting with AT&T over canceling their account. But that’s exactly what happened to one Cleveland woman after her uncle passed away unexpectedly.
In a video that now has over 52,000 views, TikTok user @www.loges.com walked viewers through what she and her 78-year-old grandmother experienced while trying to close and transfer ownership of his AT&T account.
‘AT&T, what happened to empathy?’
“I need this video to go viral,” she says at the start of the clip. “So that AT&T is held accountable for the crap that they’re putting me and my 78-year-old grandmother through.”
Her uncle died nearly a month ago. He had been living with his mother, the TikToker’s grandmother, at the time. It was the 78-year-old who found him on the bathroom floor.
“She just wanted to make sure that the account was up to date,” the creator explains. “Because that’s her lifeline. That’s the only way she can contact people.”
AT&T wouldn’t give her any information. They told her to come into the store with a death certificate. So her granddaughter took her.
“They scanned it and said they uploaded it to the account,” she says. From there, they told her to call a number to finalize the transfer.
Multiple calls, transfers, and contradictions
It didn’t go smoothly. She says she got bounced between departments, business, personal, back to business, before finally speaking with someone who explained the account had originally been opened under a business name.
That meant they couldn’t just change the name. Instead, the rep offered to create a new personal account for the grandmother and transfer her number. The woman helped fill out the forms and the credit check.
“If you don’t hear from anybody by the end of this week, you’re good,” the rep told her.
The next person she spoke with told her he needed to merge in her “mammy,” she meant her grandma, to confirm five pieces of identifying info. And he warned: they only had one shot to get it right.
“I work in mortgage servicing,” the creator says. “I understand confirming identification. But nobody else made us do this.”
They had trouble matching the business name. She thought it was MVP Concrete. Later, she realized it might have been MVP Concrete & Contracting. But the rep told them, “It doesn’t even start with an M.”
Things go even more downhill in part two
That’s when the women got heated. “All I wanna do is get my grandma her own line,” she says at the start of her follow-up video. “So she can keep her phone. Keep her number.”
She also revealed her grandma is now grieving both of her sons.
“My daddy died when I was little,” the woman adds. “He was in a car accident when he was 22.”
Her uncle, who passed recently, had been carrying survivor’s guilt for years. And now, her grandmother, already struggling with tech, was trying to preserve the last few things she had left.
“She doesn’t want a new number,” the creator explains. “She doesn’t want to lose her pictures. She really doesn’t want to lose her last texts with her son.”
They tried the store again
Eventually, they went back into the AT&T store.
The manager added the grandmother as an authorized user. The staff told them the account should be accessible now. All that was left to do was call billing.
But when they did, the rep informed them that the grandmother now owed $430 for the last two months of service, including a phone rental.
Since neither of them could make that amount, they offered to return the phone. AT&T accepted, but said the account wouldn’t be closed until the package arrived at their facility. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “Don’t you think your system could note when we shipped it?”
She also asked if they could waive some of the charges. “They said we had to call billing.”
The bill keeps growing
When they finally reached the billing department, the representative reviewed the account and told them they now owed even more, because they also had to pay off the full cost of the phone.
“I said, well, we gave the phone back,” she recalled. The rep responded, “Then go back to the store and ask them for it.”
“Why would we be paying for a phone that we’re not even going to keep?” she asked. “’Cause if we’re gonna pay it off, that means we own it, right?”
The rep agreed, but still said the balance remained.
What AT&T’s own policy says
AT&T’s public-facing policy says it waives early termination fees and device balances when someone dies, as long as they return the phone.
“If the deceased was a wireless authorized user on your account and had a device with an installment plan,” the company writes, “the device must be returned to AT&T in whatever condition it’s in. When we receive it, we can waive the remaining unbilled installment plan charges.”
In their case, the family returned the phone, but AT&T still told them to pay off the rest of the installment.
The company also doesn’t list a business name as a required item to confirm when reporting a death. Their page lists: the account number and mobile number, the account holder’s name, your relationship to them, a contact email address, the last four digits of their SSN, and a document such as a death certificate or obituary.
We’ve reached out to AT&T for clarification.
@www.loges.com @AT&T what happened to empathy? #att #losingsomeoneyoulove #healing #grief #advice ♬ original sound – www.loges.com
Commenters are furious
Plenty of TikTok users jumped in with support and outrage.
“I feel like these companies need better management in matters like this,” one person said. “Having to deal with grief AND this would send me.”
Another wrote, “File a complaint with the FCC. AT&T pulled this stuff with me when my mom passed… They don’t like when you file complaints.”
Someone else added, “My dad’s been gone for six years. Still haven’t been able to get the AT&T account out of his name.”
One commenter pointed out what’s been clear to many viewers: “Your poor grandma would never be able to navigate this without you. And she just lost her son.”
The Mary Sue has reached out to AT&T via email and @www.loges.com via TikTok messages for comment.
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