The American Red Cross and the Local County office offer a monthly discounted price for a Lifeline button to seniors who live in our town. This discounted monthly rate is from $40 to $25 as a grant from the Trexler Trust Fund. There are also coupons available from the AAA to reduce the installation rate of this device so that the user only has to pay the $13 for S and H. I got one of these devices for my dad. He used it to call the ambulance on his last hospital admission as he became weak and confused from dehydration. The ambulance, police and fire company all responded and took him to the hospital on my birthday while I was at work. I was leaving the hospital after work and received a voicemail from my dad’s neighbor that he was taken out in a wheelchair to the hospital….I quickly went to the ER to find that this was true. Recently I have returned the Lifeline device as my dad is going to be living in an assisted living facility. One must pay for the shipment back of the call button necklace and call box device that gets hooked up to the phone line. This costs roughly 6-8 dollars.
Let’s talk about rebates. You can apply for a rebate on your water and sewer bill on your primary residence. You again must have all the paperwork lined up to prove identity, residency, us citizenship, income and holdings etc. I did receive a rebate for my dad of approx $75. Some of this really is in vain because you pay accrued late fees on these bills. The penalty is not much – but when on a fixed income everything must be examined. I went with my dad to his bank and talked to the branch manager as I found my dad to be delinquent with his taxes and many bills after the death of my mother in 2009. He did not pay any taxes in 2010. I had to call the collection agency and set up an affordable payment plan over a 5 month period. He was also accumulating overdraft charges from the bank which if not caught keep accumulating. My dad reluctantly agreed to have me as POA on his checking account. The branch manager was able to rebate most of the OD charges and penalties. On second look at my dad’s statements I noticed monthly withdrawals from certain companies with 1-888 or 1-800 numbers. These companies when called by the branch manager claimed to have sold my dad internet services. Funny – because my dad does not own a computer! Somehow either on the phone or in the mail he sent checks to companies for prizes, lotteries, psychics and other mail demons who over the course of years drained his checking account. They do this by charging a monthly fee of $20 - too low to be detected by the bank’s fraud radar. If fraudulent activity is suspected by the bank radar then the amount is changed to $19 per month for example. I have thrown away much junk mail and get rich quick kits and subscriptions to magazine telling about true wealth and government conspiracies and health secrets. It is all a scam! It is very difficult to get rid of these parasitic people. They will call your family member on the phone. Try to meet them at the bank. Tell them they are in town and want to stop by for a visit. The elderly are prime suspects for this activity. These people get the elderly when they are weak, vulnerable and lonely. I would be angry at my dad for talking on the phone to these people and he would not answer the phone for me when I called to check in on him! At first I would run over to make sure he was ok – only to find him sleeping or watching TV. This was not good use of my time at all. Many times my spouse or I would have to leave work or other appointments for this reason.
Back to the mail demons…You can fill out forms through the US postal service to try and stop some of these mailings. You can pay someone on the internet to cut your name off of the mailing lists as well. Once on the sucker list you get mailings from psychics, angel speakers, the amazing Kreskin, true wealth companies, and newsletter subscriptions to people supposedly “ in the know” about the economy and the state of the country. It is all bullshit! The easiest way to police this mail (which by the way when unattended amounts to many boxes of clutter) is to go through the crap mail and throw it in the recycling bin before it gets into the house. I would pull all the bills and keep them in a separate pile so that I knew what his monthly expenses would be. I called all of the utility companies, medical companies, tax bureaus etc and set up payment plans. With the help of the branch manager I closed out the checking account and opened another policing and maintaining control of the checkbook so that no checks were sent to these companies. As the branch manager told me – it’s all over once they have your routing number from the check in hand. It is sick and these people should be convicted for fraud and misrepresentation. I have listed to many a voicemail and taping of my dad speaking to a Jamaican man on the phone named Mr. Smith or Johnny Jones etc. asking when he could go to the bank to get the money. They are pathetic parasites.
Other rebates are available to the elderly:
Rebates on taxes: If you pay them you should be able to get a rebate. Consult your accountant.
Rebates on heat: Apply for : LIEHP in the month of November through the Lehigh County or though your coal, gas or electric heat provider.
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