Continuing our Oz-Slam-Fest: Telestra's Australian mobile telephone division has a policy of cancelling the service of fatally ill customers because it's easier to collect from the living than it is from the dead.
Judy said her daughter, Jen, spent three months in hospital until October 2000, and was greeted with a Telstra bill for $338 when she arrived home.
Inquiries by Judy revealed the bill was $95 worth of calls and $243 because Telstra was cancelling the mobile telephone contract.
"(The supervisor) said the notation on her file was she had cancer.
"They wanted the contract paid out before she died as she was obviously in hospital often and they didn't think her chances were good and it was easier for them to get money from a living person than from an estate," she said.
