Spelling mistakes can happen.

Whether you have a popular name most people know how to spell or a name with a unique spelling, you have probably had someone accidentally misspell your name at one time or another.

If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky.

The man in today’s story had his name misspelled on his phone bill.

It wasn’t a big deal for a long time, but when he moved, it became a very big deal.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Won’t let me correct a spelling mistake? Good luck getting me to pay.

This was a good many years ago now.

My husband’s phone bill had a spelling mistake.

Never really paid any attention to it.

Never really caused any issues.

Until it did of course.

The mistake was simple. Think ‘Rod William’ instead of ‘Rod Williams’ type simple.

It wasn’t a problem until they moved.

One day we moved states and put in for mail redirection.

Now, where I am from, mail redirections have to be EXACT, so the bill never got forwarded.

And in all that goes along with moving, it didn’t even cross our minds that the bill hadn’t arrived or been paid.

And then inevitably the phone got cut off.

Fixing the problem wasn’t as easy as they thought it would be.

Once we realized, we were all set to fix it up.

Pay the bill. Change our address etc.

But no, can’t be that simple.

You see, to change the spelling mistake, we needed to provide proof of my husbands correct name.

But for any name change, they need name change documents such as a wedding certificate or other official name change document, which he doesn’t have as it is not a name change – just a spelling mistake.

They weren’t offered any possible solution.

For some reason, his license or passport was not good enough evidence.

We ask what we can do to get this fixed up and they offer no help or resolution.

Just stonewalling that there is no possible way to fix the incorrect spelling.

Ok, cool. At this point we were cranky.

Not going to help us with what should be a simple fix?

We won’t pay the bill we told them.

They finally understood how ridiculous they were being.

They respond with details of the contract and our obligations, debt collectors etc.

We simply replied, but who are you going to go after?

They replied, ‘you of course’.

My husband, looking comically confused, said ‘But my name is not Rod William and I am not going to pay HIS bill. Good luck finding him. If you happen to send me my own bill though, I would be happy to pay that.’

Shocked face and oh look, spelling mistake gets corrected immediately.

A spelling mistake shouldn’t have been that much of a hassle to fix.

I’m glad they finally got it straightened out.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This person had the same problem.

Another person had a similar problem with her driver’s license.

Here’s another person who had a drivers license spelling error.

This person thought the story was going to have a different ending.

That problem should’ve been easier to solve.

And who really won in the end?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.