My particular moment of truth was when I noticed that my Pacific Bell cell phone bills stopped arriving. The first month, the USPS could possibly be to blame, but the second month, I called Customer Service to figure out what was going on.
So, first question, last 4 digits of your SSN. Answer, as ever: 1234. Eh, no, WRONG, try again!? Eh, yes, my SSN ends in 1234?! No, sorry, it does not, I cannot talk to you, bye!
Eh, yes, okay... So, try again the next day, hopefully that agent will be more clued in? Nope, no way, disconnected again.
So, visited the PacBell store near my office. Same thing, the person in the store is, like, visibly shaken after checking my account. can't do anything to help me, can't tell me what is wrong.
TL;DR: my cell phone got disconnected (most likely for nonpayment) after another month or so. Tried to sign up with AT&T, but got denied, because my 'nonpayment' was already recorded on my credit file, so, yeah.
Ended up calling every number in the PacBell SoCal range, and finally got through to someone who took pity on me and was willing to listen to me, and got my account and credit restored.
A few months later, PacBell drained my account by issuing hundreds of direct debit orders for my monthly cellphone bill. They eventually stopped doing that, but never reimbursed me for any overdraft fees. I was almost evicted due to bounced checks because of this, but nobody cared.
I've lived most of my life therefore and after in the EU, and while life here definitely is not perfect, I've NEVER had trivial issues like the above almost cause me to be homeless. So, I guess there's a startup idea in there somewhere? /s