You may have problems with your cell phone provider, but one woman says her problem led to a life-threatening medical emergency.
Last year, Angela Hawkins called Verizon Wireless to discuss the lapse of a $60 bill credit. Instead of a helpful conversation with a customer service representative, she ended up in the hospital and in the middle of a lengthy lawsuit.
Hawkins claims that the representative and their supervisor were very rude to her and threatened to have her arrested. She says she is being wrongly accused of threatening to kill everyone at the Verizon call center.
“I was just blindsided,” Hawkins said. “What a horrible thing to accuse someone of.”
Hawkins is suing Verizon Wireless $2.35 million, claiming both negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The phone call not only rattled Hawkins, but a trip to the emergency room showed she suffered a heart attack during the debacle.
She described her November 19 conversation. At first, Hawkins talked to a woman representative for 20 minutes before being transferred to a supervisor. After being on hold for a long time, the supervisor got on the line to say she had threatened them and he was going to have her arrested.
Shocked and lightheaded, Hawkins hung up the phone and informed her husband of the incident. She said she checked outside several times expecting to see police cars.
Apparently, the supervisor called back two hours later to apologize. The supervisor says after listening to the recorded conversation, there was no threats from Hawkins. A day after the calls, she went to the doctor where she received an EKG that revealed she had experienced a heart attack.
Although she had high cholesterol, Hawkin’s doctor said that the stress from the phone call led to her heart attack.
“She was in good health,” Hawkin’s attorney said, noting that she took a stress test in 2013 and passed. “It was all found to be in good working order.”
Hawkins now has more than $60,000 in medical bills and will have to pay for expensive medicine for the rest of her life.
Verizon has declined to comment on the impending lawsuit.
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