Back to Home Page
The Baldwin Family's
Parent Getaways Page
Family tested & economical
vacation ideas for Southern California families
Family Vacations
Parent Getaways
Restaurant Reviews
Email
Newsletter
Thinking about Yosemite?
Here's how we did it with two adults, three kids and a grandma over six
days!
Overview Top 5
Unwanted Charges Eliminate &
Prevent Them Getting Refunds
Vendors About/Contact
Overview - If your business still gets
its phone service through the old "Ma Bell" local phone company (as
opposed to one of the newer competitive phone providers) then you need to
double check your phone bill each and every month for charges you did not
authorize. You may not know it but the local phone company allows other
companies to bill you through your local phone bill. And while the local
phone company allows other businesses to bill you through your local phone
bill, the local phone company does not verify that the charges being
billed to you by the other company are valid. When these unauthorized
charges fraudulently appear on your phone bill it's called "cramming".
Unfortunately you as the business owner or manager are the only one that
can spot the unauthorized charges and if you don't comb over your bill
every month to spot these unauthorized charges - you'll pay for them.
Why does the local phone company allow other companies to pass charges
onto your phone bill? "Third-party billing" is supposedly a great
convenience in that you only have to pay one bill instead of separate
bills for obvious authorized phone related charges like yellow-page
advertising in the "real yellow pages", 411 information calls and
long-distance calls from your chosen long distance carrier. Over the years
though, some less-than-scrupulous companies have realized that most
businesses rarely scrutinize their local phone bills. To take advantage of
this, these companies have come up with elaborate schemes to place
unauthorized charges on your phone bill that you'll end up paying for
without even thinking. Unauthorized charges you can end up paying for
include charges for unwanted (and unused) email accounts, web sites,
directory information calls, directory advertising in obscure
publications, voice mail accounts and other services.
In theory, before these charges can be placed on your phone bill, the
company that is originating the third-party billed charges is supposed to
have a verification of the order like a voice recording. In reality
though, all the company needs to do to initiate the charge is submit your
name and phone number to the billing entity. The verifications are only
required to be produced if a complaint is filed.
To prevent these charges from appearing on you business phone bill it's
helpful to understand the four parties that make unauthorized third party
phone charges a costly reality. Party number one is any employee who can
answer your business phones. The unauthorized charge is rarely random and
it usually happens after one of your company employees gets a
telemarketing call. Employees should be instructed to document and report
any overly aggressive telemarketing calls they receive. Party number two
is the telemarketing company that originates the unauthorized charges by
trying to get your employee to accept some service for which you'll be
billed through your local phone bill. Party number three is the
third-party billing company that has billing agreements with your local
phone company. The name of the third-party billing is the one that is
prominently displayed on your phone bill. After the third-party billing
company's name is the name of the company that is originating the unwanted
charges. Party number four is your "Ma Bell" local phone company that
collects the unwanted charges (keeps a share for "Ma") and then passes the
rest to the third-party billing company (who keeps a big share) and then
passes the balance on to the company that initiated the unwanted charge.
Following are some of the top third-party billing names and
unauthorized charge originators you'll find on your phone bill. If you see
these names on your phone bill you'll want to call the toll free number
listed next to the charge to confirm it's a charge that's been properly
authorized to be placed on your bill. Following are actual examples that
we've recently found while auditing business phone bills.
Important note: Third-party billing companies like the ones
listed below simply bill you for the products of others. As such, it's not
the third-party billing company that initiated the charge you did not
authorize - they simply pass on the charge from the initiating company to
your phone bill.
Top 5 Unwanted Charges
1. VOICE MAIL - Enhance
Services Billing Inc. (ESBI), VoiceXpress & CoolSavings.com
We found a $12.95 per month charge on a client's local AT&T phone bill
for non-AT&T "VoiceXpress" voice mail service. When we called the listed
phone number for VoiceXpress of 800-367-8006 we spoke to a VoiceXpress
customer service rep who said a specific person "ordered" the voicemail
service almost 15 months ago. When I asked that he give me detailed
information about what kind of voicemail service was ordered he quickly
stated that the voicemail service was ordered through the website
www.CoolSavings.com. He stated that when people go to that website to
download free grocery coupons that some of the fine print states that they
will be charged $12.95 per month for the voicemail. Before I could even
begin to take issue with the whole situation he said that I would be
refunded all the money - at total of $194.25 on the phone bill within the
next bill or so.
I was actually kind of surprised that they were so anxious to refund
all our money without a fight until I started Googling ESBI, VoiceXpress &
CoolSavings.com. I quickly found that my client was not the first to end
up being billed for a service they did not want. Click the following links
for more information
Complaint Site 1
Complaint Page 2
Complaint Page 3
Complaint Page 4
Complaint Page 5
ESBI Lawsuit
ESBI Lawsuit 2
2. DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE - ILD
Teleservices, "10 15 15 800", Calling10.com & TelSeven.com
We found ILD billed our client $21.42 for three separate "directory
information calls to the phone number 10-15-15-800. Unlike with ESBI
above, ILD was a little stingier before finally relenting to a credit.
They were quite insistent that an employee did indeed dial 10-15-15-800
for directory assistance at a cost of over $5 per call. I quickly
challenged them by asking, "Who in the world even knows to dial
10-15-15-800 for directly information unless they were mislead to do so?".
The customer service person I complained to issued a one time $21.42
"courtesy credit" and said a check will be mailed out right away.
Surprisingly, the check arrived just a few days later.
Click one of the following links to read Internet posts from others
about unauthorized 10-15-15-800 directory assistance calls.
Complaint Page 1
Complaint Page 2
Complaint Page 3
Complaint Page 4
Call10 WebSite
TelSeven WebSite
Unfortunately, unless you are able to block your phone system from
dialing 10-15-15-800 or other 101xxxxx "bypass codes", t hese unauthorized
charges can be very difficult to stamp out. While an employee my indeed be
tricked into dialing the number as is alleged on some of the web links
above, it's likely that an employee is dialing these numbers out of
ignorance or malice. Tell them that if they want free directory assistance
to dial 800-GOOG-411 or 800-FREE-411.
3. INTERNET DIRECTORY LISTING -
OAN Services, Inc., USdirectory.com, & Xacti
We found $49.95 per month being charged for a non-AT&T online yellow
page listings at www.USdirectory.com. When we contacted the customer
service number for US Directory we were assured that someone at the
business did indeed place the order. The business disputes that the charge
was authorized. US Directory said a credit of $149.85 for three months of
the charges would be issued.
Click the following links to view information about others who feel
they did not authorize what was charged or to get additional background
information about US Directory.
Complaint Page 1
Complaint Page 2
Complaint Page 3
Complaint Page 4
USdirectory.com
Xacti
Robert Osterlund
The only way to stop this sort of unauthorized billing would be to
contact your local phone company and ask them what your options are to
block all third-party billing. You may or may not want to pursue this
option depending on how many authorized third-party billing vendors you
are already paying through your phone bill. Many of these vendors (like
the real yellow pages) will only do business with you if you allow them to
bill you through your phone bill.
4. DIAL AROUND - USBI & MCI
We found a total of $84.31 billed by USBI on behalf of for MCI long
distance calls. When we called the listed customer service number the rep
assured me that either the line was PICed to MCI or that someone was using
an MCI dial-around code to make the calls. I assured the representative
that the line in questions was confirmed to be PICd to Sprint and that no
employee needed to dial any long distance bypass code on the line because
the line had a working long distance carrier. After a couple minutes the
representative granted the "one-time courtesy credit".
Like the "10 15 15 800" directory assistance dial around problem noted
above, other than blocking your whole system from being able to connect
dial around attempted calls there is not a good way to block these sort of
calls.
5. UNAUTHORIZED PHONE LINE -
Sprint
We found about $35 worth of long distance charges for a phone number
that no one seemed to think belonged to the company. In going back through
many back bills it seemed the number had been added to the companies
Sprint long distance phone bill over a year and a half ago. We called
Sprint to ask them who added the phone number to the account and why.
Sprint responded that their records didn't go back that far. We then
stated that we wanted to initiate a fraud investigation. Sprint issues a
credit of $304.80 for all the billing on the phone line since it was added
to the account. They also blocked the phone line from the Sprint network.
I called the line in question and it was some residential phone customer
who had no relation to my client.
The obvious way to stop this sort or unauthorized phone line problem is
to check the list of all phone numbers billing to the account every month
to make sure every number is authorized to be billing on the account.
5 Ways to Eliminate & Prevent
Unwanted Charges
1. Switch to a Competitive Local Phone Company
- Only "Ma Bell", the old local phone company allows other companies to
add charges to your phone bill. If you switch your local phone lines to
one of the new competitive local phone companies, the only charges that
will ever appear on your local phone bill are the charges you have
authorized in a signed contract. How refreshing!
2. Have a "Phone Cop" Review Every Bill Every
Month - Designate an inside employee or an outside consultant
with the responsibility of knowing what phone services you're subscribed
to and why. Then have that person scrutinize every phone bill every month
to ensure that only contracted prices are being charges to authorized
services. Have them report and track all discrepancies. Have them keep
detailed records of all promised refunds so it can be confirmed when the
refunds have been received. Have them Google the customer service contact
phone number of any company that unexpectedly places charges on your phone
bill. You may quickly find that the company has many Internet complaints
published against it.
3. Have a Phone Service Inventory & Expansion
Plan - Every year the local phone company sends their customers
a "customer service record" or CSR for every phone bill they get that
explains in layman's terms what they're being billed for. Since the annual
CSR is not an invoice, many businesses simply discard them - don't! Use
the annual CSRs to bounce against the service inventory that you create in
house to make sure the phone company is correctly billing you for what you
think you have.
In theory, the phone services you currently have are the result of some
well thought out plan. Who's the originator of that phone plan and where
is it now? It's important to understand the original "phone plan" and to
constantly be updating it so as to properly plan for inevitable expansion.
More money is wasted because often anyone in a business is allowed to
order phone services. In every business, only one person should be
authorized to order phone services - the keeper of the phone service
"expansion plan".
4. Keep a Phone Order Diary - If a
phone service is important enough to order, it's important enough to
document. Most every phone order is followed up by the phone company with
a written confirmation (which you may or may not ever see). Immediately
follow up every "MAC" (move, add or change) order with an email to
yourself documenting what was ordered, what was the quoted price and all
other relevant details. by emailing yourself a note you create a
"breadcrumb trail" that you can follow up on later if something goes wrong
by simply running a search on your email.
5. Just Say "No" and Hang Up - Many
unauthorized phone charges originate with a telemarketer calling into the
business. If the telemarketer is able to keep you on the line for any
period of time they are going to naturally think you want the service and
then contrive some reason to place the order for you. Just say, "No thanks
& good luck with your next call." Then hang up.
Getting Refunds
We found that getting refunds is easy but making sure the refunds were
actually issued was hard. Some of the companies issued and mailed refund
checks within just a few days. Other companies said the refund would show
up on our phone bill in "one to two bill cycles".
Keeping a scrupulous diary of conversations and promises is the only
way to guarantee refunds will be received. Document the full contact
information of everyone you speak with and email them a summary of your
conversation and request that they email you back a confirmation that
that's what they agreed to do.
When the company representatives know you're keeping good notes on them
(documentation for a FCC complaint) your refunds are more likely to be
received quickly.
ALWAYS ASK, "So if I don't get what you say I'm going to get by the
time you say I'm going to get it, specifically who should I follow up
with? What is the name and contact information for your supervisor?"
Vendors – The following vendors have
submitted customer reference letters to verify that they are particularly
adept at helping small businesses eliminate unwanted charges and get
refunds.
Auditel, Inc.
Rick Clements, VP 800-473-5655 #2
Schooley Mitchell - Independent and Objective Telecommunications
Consultants in the United States & Canada
Abilita
- An Evolution in Telecom Consulting
If you'd like to get listed here please submit your contact information
& two customer letters of reference to Dan Baldwin at
Dan@ATELbroker.com.
About/Contact - “Telecom Survival Guide
News” is written for the network service clients and prospective clients
of ATEL Communications, Inc. To discuss the specifics of this newsletter
and how they impact your business or to license or distribute "Telecom
Survival Guide" content, please contact ATEL broker & consultant Dan
Baldwin at 858-646-4655 or
Dan@ATELbroker.com.
Sincerely,
Dan Baldwin
|
