A Dish Network automated billing telephone call ringing daily for over two months has Nancy Inguez up in arms after calling the firm numerous times asking them to stop calling her.

A grandmother of six older children, the Manteca woman called her oldest grandson, Nicholas Bontrager, for help.   He just happens to be a consumer affairs attorney in Beverly Hills. He filed a complaint on her behalf in Sacramento this week against the company for the repeated calls for payment from the first of June until near the end of August – weekends, Sundays and holidays.

She said she started calling the firm after the first month of daily calls became a form of harassment for her hearing the same recorded demand for payment message.  She said when the phone would ring at exactly the same time, she knew who it was going to be on the other end.

The calls she received before beginning to complain are worth $500 each if her complaint is confirmed, she added.  Those made after asking the Dish firm to stop calling may bring her as much as $1,500 each, she added.

“After I made five different phone calls to Dish and told them it was not my account, they assured me each time that the calls would stop – but they didn’t,” she said.

The recordings asked the person answering the phone to press one if they were the person on the account – if not that person, press two.  Iniguez said it didn’t matter because the message was always the same. 

“It took me a while to realize it wasn’t going to stop.  I was busy and I was doing things,  however,  six days after her fifth call and talking to one more supervisor in late August, the calls quit coming, she noted.

Iniguez said she had been told that she was a secondary phone number on someone else’s account who she didn’t know.  The phone number for that person had been disconnected, she added.  How the TV service got her number in their computer system is a mystery she doesn’t understand.

She recalled that in the first two weeks she would get calls between 8:30 and 9 in the morning and after that at 7:30 each night like clockwork.

The first and second times she called to have her number removed from their call list, she said she was assured that would happen.  The third call determined that she needed to be taken off of the account to stop the calls – but it didn’t stop, she said.

Iniguez said was always assured that the annoying calls would stop,  but then the next day the phone would ring again at the same time.

“We’re just trying to get the word out there so other people can come forward,” she said.  The legal action her grandson has taken could take from a year to a year and a half to be resolved.

She said when she first asked her grandson just what kind of law he was practicing; his reply will forever be etched in her mind.  “I help the little people” against the large firms that have large legal staffs.

Iniguez has a lengthy work history including being a grocery checker in Washington and Oregon and a Certified Nursing Assistant at Bethany Home in Ripon.  She also worked for a while at the Ripon Bakery some 20 years ago and now volunteers at a local hospital.