Financial responsibility

Is it illegal for me to go to a business, such as Celullar 101, and ask the employee to call someone to transfer financial responsibility over to me. The cell phone was hooked up in her name, but I bought the phone, I was a user on her account. I went to Cellular 101 to try and transfer it into my name. They called AT&T and they said I needed the last 4 numbers of her social security number. I called her and asked her for it, and she refused. The employee at Cellular 101 called her and asked to to transfer financial responsibility over to me and she refused. All I wanted was to have my phone in my name. Did I do anything illegal by asking for the last 4 numbers ?

I don't believe that you broke any laws by asking for the original owners last 4, but you need to consider this from the phone companies side....

They have a contractual agreement with the original owner who is responsible for making the payments. In entering this contract, they extended credit to her (in the form of phone service and phone cost) after doing a credit check on her. You are now asking that the phone company transfer this contract to you. They are NOT obligated to do this 'transfer'.

Bottom line, you can contract with anyone that you want to provide phone service. You do not need to use Cellular 101. In the event that there are outstanding contractual obligations on the original owner, she will be responsible. For example, most phone 'plans' require a specific 'enrollment' period (say 12 months). If she sold you the phone with 6 months left, you could take the phone to someone else and contract with them. If this happens, the original owner is liable for the remaining 6 months. You might call her back and point this out to her... it could go a long way to convincing her that it is her interest to allow you to transfer the account to your name.

Thanks for replying to my post, the real problem was that she was threatening to shut off the phone everytime she got upset with me. I had asked her several times to transfer financial responsibility over to me, I qualified without a deposit. She could have kept her number, but it was my phone, I bought it, therefore I wanted to be financially responsible for it. She was using it as a weapon to keep me around, and I needed to cut those ties...understand ? I simply sent her the phone, and bought another one and had it hooked up in my name. So, she got a free phone...