It can be incredibly painful to realize that you can barely remember what the voice of a dead loved one sounded like. However, we’re not sure that we accept the proposed solution of one T-Mobile customer service rep. Reader Robert says that he was asked whether he wants to keep his dead father’s line open so he can call up his voice mail periodically.

Fortunately, we’ve learned that this is not an approved retention tactic at T-Mobile, and the company made things up to Richard. However, we’re appalled that this happened in the first place, and bereaved family members should be aware that slimy sales reps might try this.

Keeping the line open isn’t necessarily a bad or distasteful thing to do. You could keep the phone around and charged so you can intercept your loved one’s calls and texts and tell them the bad news.

Robert had a line for his dad on his account, and called up T-Mobile to cancel. “The loyalty rep asked me if he had a voicemail set up,” Richard wrote to Consumerist. “I said yes. She then asked if I wouldn’t want to keep the extra line open so that I could call it and hear his voice whenever I want to. How low is that?”

Pretty low, but we’ve heard of similar tactics in the past. Fortunately, when we alerted T-Mobile to this incident, they found it upsetting too. Robert sent us an update shortly after Big Magenta contacted him. After we sent his letter to T-Mobile’s media relations team, someone from the office of the president called him. “She apologized for how their salesperson tried to keep my line open,” Robert told Consumerist. “She said that it’s not how they train their people, and the rep would be re-trained.”

As an apology, the company is waiving his entire bill for this month, a total of $147. Very classy, T-Mobile!

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