{"id":389057,"date":"2010-03-04T10:31:24","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T15:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"tag:consumerist.com,2010:\/\/1.10002842"},"modified":"2010-03-04T06:30:51","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T11:30:51","slug":"att-thinks-you-should-pay-their-disability-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/389057","title":{"rendered":"AT&amp;T Thinks You Should Pay Their Disability Claims"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/assets_c\/2010\/03\/brokenleg-thumb-326x500-37744.jpg\">         <\/p>\n<p>Not only does AT&#038;T <a href=\"http:\/\/consumerist.com\/2010\/03\/why-wont-att-cancel-my-account.html\" >give you service you can&#8217;t use and then continue to bill for it<\/a>, they also apparently want you to pay the disability claim when one of their employees injures himself on your property.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, an AT&#038;T tech arrived at a customer&#8217;s Chicago-area home to hook up his new phone service. And in spite of the fact that it hadn&#8217;t snowed in several days and the owner hires a snow-removal service for the property, the tech slipped and broke his leg while walking down a paved path.<\/p>\n<p>Two weeks later, the owner gets a letter from Sedgwick Claims Management Services, which administers AT&#038;T&#8217;s workers&#8217; compensation program. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Our initial investigation indicates that you may be at fault for these damages,&#8221; read the letter. &#8220;The current extent of these damages to our client is currently being determined but to date, we have paid $2,761.07 in disability.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, the building&#8217;s owner was less than pleased.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I never heard of such a thing where they would sue a customer,&#8221; He said. &#8220;You do everything you&#8217;re supposed to do and this still happened.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The owner decided to contact WGN Radio&#8217;s Problem Solver program, who then attempted to contact a rep for AT&#038;T.<\/p>\n<p>Lo and behold, a few days later he gets another letter from Sedgwick. This one is much different in tone.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;After further investigation&#8230; we will discontinue our pursuit with regards to subrogation of this claim&#8230; Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience this may have caused.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Responding to the radio show, a rep for AT&#038;T had this to say:<br \/>\n&#8220;AT&#038;T has policies and procedures in place to address workers&#8217; compensation and disability matters, and we work with all parties involved to review individual claims. In this particular instance, proper protocols were not followed.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Is the homeowner financially responsible for any injuries the tech might have suffered? If not, at what point &#8212; what kind of incident would have to occur &#8212; for you to hold the homeowner liable?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/business\/ct-biz-shoveling-laws-dup-mar3,0,2043509.column\" >Snow shoveling rules confuse homeowner after AT&#038;T threat<\/a> [Chicago Tribune]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Not only does AT&#038;T give you service you can&#8217;t use and then continue to bill for it, they also apparently want you to pay the disability claim when one of their employees injures himself on your property. A few weeks ago, an AT&#038;T tech arrived at a customer&#8217;s Chicago-area home to hook up his new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5519,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5519"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}