Dear Ann Landers,
My wife and I recently visited her 86-year-old mother in Oklahoma. While we were there, she asked us to look at her telephone bill, which showed lease charges for four phones at $4.45 each. She had been paying these lease charges for over 23 years. We discovered that one of the phones had been taken out of her house 20 years before, and two phones had not been used for over 15 years. I wonder how many senior citizens are unknowingly paying lease charges for old phones that are no longer in use. Please alert your readers to check if they are being billed for "Consumer Lease Services" and see which instruments the bill applies to. Incorrect charges can be removed by calling the telephone company customer service department. It's worth looking into. -- Bob in Grand Prairie, Texas

Dear Grand,
Most people today buy their phones. However, it wouldn't hurt for my readers to take a good, hard look at their next phone bill and see if there are any incorrect leasing charges. Again, I love the way you readers look out for one another.