Dead Daughter's Voicemails Erased by Phone Company

[Hum]

For 51-year-old Faron Butler, the thing he cherished most after his daughter's death was being able to hear her voice.

"Every time I had a bad day or just wanted to listen to her I'd go through my old voicemails," Butler told ABCNews.com through tears. "I had one that I'd play over and over again. She'd be saying 'Daddy, I love you and I miss you.'"

He said he was shocked when a few weeks ago he went to hear that familiar voice, only to find out the voicemail had been erased.

"I was going through my messages after a friend called me and was stunned when it said 'no saved messages.' I mean, my heart just stopped. It tears me up," Butler said.

Butler's daughter Rhema was 12 years old when she was diagnosed with desmoplastic cancer. She died two years later, on June 6, 2011.

Butler, who lives in Elma, Washington and has two other children, says he was offered a free trial of T-Mobile's "voice-to-text" service when Rehema's messages were deleted without warning. He says he called the company, asking them to recover the voicemails.

T-Mobile told Butler there was no way to get them back.

"They should have warned me, or I would have never ever done it," Butler said. "Just complete negligence on their part."

For Rhema's sister Kirsey, the voicemails meant being able to hold onto the friendship she and her sister shared.

"When someone dies you hold onto memories, pictures and cards," Kirsey said. "Now with technology you can hear the voicemails, and I'd go home and listen to her voice all the time. Now I can't, and it's awful."

T-Mobile released a statement to ABC affiliate KOMO in Seattle, saying, "T-Mobile deeply regrets the sorrow the Butler family is experiencing.

"When saving voice mail messages long-term, customers receive an alert and are prompted to re-save messages that they'd like to keep. Unfortunately, when the voicemail-to-text feature was added, which has a shorter window for saving messages, the voicemail messages were deleted. We sincerely apologize the Butlers were not adequately made aware of this possibility and are working internally to assure this information is clearly communicated to customers in the future."

A T-Mobile representative, Graham Crow, said the company is looking into compensating the family.

"We understand and we feel sorry for what the family is going through," Crow said.

But Butler, who works for a labor union, said compensation isn't enough. He's hired attorney Chris Crew to file a negligence suit against the company, demanding them to tap into archives and retrieve the voicemails.

"What I think is really going on is that they don't want to tell people they can recover lost data, because then everyone will want their deleted items retrieved," Crew said. "It will cost them a lot to do it, and it would be worth it in this case, but not for everyone that's lost their voicemails."

Crew said the family plans to file the lawsuit next week.

"I listened to it probably twice a week because I miss her so much," Butler said. "We just want to be able to heal and remember her voice."

source

[Original Poster]

in all honesty what this people were doing was unhealthy anyway.... I can understand missing someone maybe wanting to hear/see them from time to time ... but doing it this much is sick... maybe this is for the best

[rhianntp]

You have GOT to be kidding me...now it's T-Mobile's job to preserve your memories?? How about some self responsibility here? Unreal

[Art3x]

Compensation really... try to recover them if possible that's about the extent of it.

[Charisma Veteran]

That is really sad... but it can be worse for a grieving family, I think, to be constantly reminded and having the wounds torn open over and over. They need closure and to move on from it. This may end up being better for them in the long run, even though it's of course terribly painful now. Why wouldn't they save the recordings somewhere "offline" if they wanted them forever anyway?

[qdave]

Time to move on. This is definitely one of the lifes hint for him.

[firey]

That is really sad... but it can be worse for a grieving family, I think, to be constantly reminded and having the wounds torn open over and over. They need closure and to move on from it. This may end up being better for them in the long run, even though it's of course terribly painful now. Why wouldn't they save the recordings somewhere "offline" if they wanted them forever anyway?

My thoughts exactly. If you could hear the persons voice whenever you wanted, you would never cope with the fact they are gone. You will keep expecting to see them walk in the door. As hard as it is.. you have to move on, especially if you are upset that the voicemail is gone.

[Japlabot]

What a crock... Unbelievable how low people stoop to, everything is everyone else's fault but theirs with no sense of personal responsibility and feel that the world owes it to them. T-mobile owes them nothing.

if it was important enough, she should transferred her own recording using a smart phone app or even a simple tape recorder with a microphone held up to the ear piece.

If she wants to sign up to a new voicemail system, she should have asked and then she would have found out that it REPLACES the previous voicemail system for that customer. Before asking to be changed over, she should have made this requirement clear to them that she can't afford to lose the message. Also voicemail systems are designed as a TEMPORARY storage of messages, that is why it keeps prompting if she wants to continue saving it.

SHE should pay T-Mobile for the cost of any attempted data retrieval or recovery, successful or not.

[Hum]

I'd get out the Ouja board.

[butilikethecookie]

God. Sorry for your loss, but come on. Have you ever heard of backups? I'm sure there is someone in the famialy that could have done it.

[c.grz]

How does one backup a voice mail? And remember; this is Joe Blow we're taking about here; not a "tech expert".

I don't feel that T-Mobile should "compensate them" other than just restoring the voice mails. People cope in different ways; no one here can say how they choose to cope is not right for them...it may not be right for you...but that's for you to decide and no one else!

And I do feel it was the customer reps responsibility to point out the chance in time voice mails are stored. This isn't just for this; but tons of other people hold on to voice mail for months at a time for other reasons as well.

[Hell-In-A-Handbasket]

He should have put it as MP3 and taken it off his voice mail

But ALSO like others have said, it wasn't healthy to begin with

How does one backup a voicemail? And remember; this is Joe Blow we're taking about here; not a "tech expert".

Same way he copied tapes when he was younger, get something else with a microphone, hold microphone to whatever the voicemail was on.

Hit play on one, record on other.

I usEd to record cassette tapes that way, 2 stereo's pointed at each other. 1 records, the other plays, leave the room

[Davo]

If it's anything like the Voicemail-to-Text trial I'm used to, he already has a smartphone. I also know that carrier Visual Voicemail apps have an option to save the audio file to the SD card.

It's negligence on their part? No, it's lack of understanding on yours.

[Dick Montage]

What an absolute idiot. Not for listening but for trying to even find "blame" in any of this. It's a standard practise and if it meant that much, he had the option to archive it (T-Mobile offer this) or to re-record it to his computer or such. It's not T-Mobiles job to store voicemails ad infinitum!

[Lingwo]

Yeah sue T-Mobile for negligence. That is the smart thing to do. Instead of moving on, lets drag out the whole thing and drag the grieving process out even longer. I'm sure he has camcorder footage lying around and pictures.

I see he has two other children, i bet they really want this dragged out.

[Yazoo]

Can't believe the ignorance shown in this thread, how is this unhealthy?

This is no different to people keeping photos of their dead relatives, which they see every day. People keep videos they recorded and watch them on anniversaries. How you come to terms with someone?s death or how you wish to keep the memory of the deceased person alive is not the same as everyone else?s.

Faron Butler is not suing for compensation; he wants T-Mobile to extract his daughter?s messages from their archive, which he feels is the right thing for T-Mobile to do. His argument is they never promoted the fact the messages will be deleted when he went onto the voice-to-text trial. Had he known he would have made arrangements to have the messages saved

[ozgeek]

It is unhealthy because how much time remaining of your life are you going to weep over your relative's deaths? Are you going to spend the rest of your life crying or should you do something productative about your life, something even your dead relatives would want you to?

It is best to move on. date new girls or find jobs. Crying will not bring your relatives back, but will only cause you more grief and problems as evidenced here.

I have lost all my grandparents and some of my uncles. I am in grief but it's been up to 15 years ago. We still remember them but we know it is not something to cry over about because we already cried - at the funeral and the days after.

The guy here has only himself to blame, if he wants to waste his life, listening to this small clips of someone who passed away, then why didn' he backup the audio, for all the telco would think the girl is still alive. Don't people get charged for using Voicemail? At least I do get charged.

[Dick Montage]

"Promoted", no they never promoted it, but the terms of the service are available online and upon request.

Seeing as he valued this message so highly, the negelgence is upon him for neither backing it up locally (record to PC), archiving it (a service available on the system), or checking the terms.

[sava700]

You have GOT to be kidding me...now it's T-Mobile's job to preserve your memories?? How about some self responsibility here? Unreal

I kinda agree here... they could have told them to send them a audio copy on mp3 or something to their email if they asked the phone company...I'm sure they would have done it seeing as how they do it for any cop when asked.