Any guesses what this letter means? This lovely, incomprehensible beast was in my mail box today and it is from the phone company. With the help of my trusty Hebrew-English dictionary, this is what I translated:
Respected Customer/Customerette,
From a check we reevaluated that there exists a financial debt of value 63.89 (about 20$) that (something incomprehensible). Here we ask to pay off the debt immediately portion to prevent the leaving of services (this word ironically is a homonym with the word for "toilet"). If within 7 days is not paid the debt and (something incomprehensible) forced to remove the services without all the seeing early.
Something something something. Pay your bill or else....
Invoice number 251665157
Invoice period 07/09
Payment date 04/09/09
F-U,
Your Phone Company
So let me get this straight. I didn't pay my bill for July, but I have paid all the subsequent bills and so now I am getting my phone cut off?
I would have thought that if you missed a payment the value would just get tacked on to the next bill. But yet again, I unwisely assumed Israel would be similar to Canada, and was dead wrong. So, for a 20$ debt that happened in September, I am getting hate mail from the phone company.
The phone number the letter gives leads to a nightmare maze of recorded messages that I can conveniently do in my choice of language: Hebrew, Arabic or Russian.
I tried to just hang out on the line to get someone, but nope. Didn't work. Then I started pressing buttons. Also didn't work.
Since I received the letter on the 11th of May, EIGHT days after the letter was dated, I guess our phone is getting cut off.
Meh. I'll use the cell.
4 comments:
The letter is as follows :
"from an evaluation we preformed it seems that there is a debt of 63.89 shekels to our company. you are requested to pay this debt immediately in order to prevent the removal of services. if, in 7 days, this debt is not payed and we get a valid direct debit we will be forced to remove all services without prior notice.
For your information - non-payment will result in transferring the debt to the legal department and in additional expenses."
then they tell you that you have not paid the July 2009 phone bill.
You should pay if you don't want to get Hans Walter Staobly in legal trouble (he is the guy with his name on the letter. And if you don't want to give them direct deposit (or, in other words, access to your bank account) you should ask a Hebrew speaking guy to call them and make sure that this demand is stricken from the records.
Have fun with bureaucracy.
Costi! You win the translation prize!
Thanks, I didn't get the part about the direct debit. Since I am not Hans-Walter, they will have to be happy with me paying at the post office.
As for finding a Hebrew speaker to call them up, I just hope Itzik likes my home made cookies.
Can you explain one more thing? Why the heck didn't they just tack the 63.89 on to the next bill?
One other thought. I have never heard of a phone company threatening to take away your toilet :-)
Can't you just hear it? "Cut the telephone but for goodness sakes, don't take the toilet!!! Nooooo!"
I guess they don't tack the debt to the next bill (or the 7 after that). That's how they work.
As for toilets - the word SHERUTIM is first and foremost translated as "services", on day to day use it is also used as the word for toilet. So the formal letter was right to use that word.
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