What is the name of your state? FL
I'm not sure where this should go, so I'm going to post it here and hope for the best.
Staring about 4 years ago, my husband's employer required that all the managers carry a cell phone, so they could be reached 24/7. For the first few years, $20 was deducted from his salary to cover unlimited minutes. We don't know when they stopped deducting this, but it was some time last year.
Last month, he received an email from the accountant of the company, stating he owed $72 in "overage" charges and long distance access charges for his cell phone. There was no warning. We know for certain that he has used far more minutes in prior months than he did during the month in question, and that he has always had long distance access charges every month.
My husband never signed a contract of any kind about this phone. In fact, he was never even told how many minutes the company plan had.
I could understand if they had sent out a memo in advance stating that as of a specific date, any minutes over (what we now know are) 600 or any long distance access charges would be billed to that person. But they didn't. They just sent an email saying "you owe....".
We offered to pay this in installments of $10 per month, since we had not budgeted for this expense AT ALL. My husband was told not just "no", but "hell no". We could have 2 months. Period.
Is this legal? If he signed no contract, never knew the limit on the minutes, had established a precedent long ago of using far more minutes and long distance expenses than in the month they decided to start billing their managers, can they legally require him to pay that? If THEY demand that he have the phone and he isn't allowed to turn it off, how can they make HIM pay for it, especially when they gave no notice whatsoever?
Thanks for any advice you can give us. This is a small business of less than 75 employees in Jacksonville, Florida.
I need to add that I work from home and am alone all day. I have a heart condition, so my husband needs to call and check on me. Some of the calls were between he and I. His employer stated that he could use the land lines for those calls. We disagreed, since they tape all telephone conversations in order to provide "quality service". We do not want our personal conversations listened to by these people. While we now know that we will get our own cell phones to talk to each other, my question still remains that since this has gone on since the beginning and a precedent was set during prior months, can they legally just decide out of the blue to bill him for this?
I'm not sure where this should go, so I'm going to post it here and hope for the best.
Staring about 4 years ago, my husband's employer required that all the managers carry a cell phone, so they could be reached 24/7. For the first few years, $20 was deducted from his salary to cover unlimited minutes. We don't know when they stopped deducting this, but it was some time last year.
Last month, he received an email from the accountant of the company, stating he owed $72 in "overage" charges and long distance access charges for his cell phone. There was no warning. We know for certain that he has used far more minutes in prior months than he did during the month in question, and that he has always had long distance access charges every month.
My husband never signed a contract of any kind about this phone. In fact, he was never even told how many minutes the company plan had.
I could understand if they had sent out a memo in advance stating that as of a specific date, any minutes over (what we now know are) 600 or any long distance access charges would be billed to that person. But they didn't. They just sent an email saying "you owe....".
We offered to pay this in installments of $10 per month, since we had not budgeted for this expense AT ALL. My husband was told not just "no", but "hell no". We could have 2 months. Period.
Is this legal? If he signed no contract, never knew the limit on the minutes, had established a precedent long ago of using far more minutes and long distance expenses than in the month they decided to start billing their managers, can they legally require him to pay that? If THEY demand that he have the phone and he isn't allowed to turn it off, how can they make HIM pay for it, especially when they gave no notice whatsoever?
Thanks for any advice you can give us. This is a small business of less than 75 employees in Jacksonville, Florida.
I need to add that I work from home and am alone all day. I have a heart condition, so my husband needs to call and check on me. Some of the calls were between he and I. His employer stated that he could use the land lines for those calls. We disagreed, since they tape all telephone conversations in order to provide "quality service". We do not want our personal conversations listened to by these people. While we now know that we will get our own cell phones to talk to each other, my question still remains that since this has gone on since the beginning and a precedent was set during prior months, can they legally just decide out of the blue to bill him for this?
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