Love the one you're with - Fight Cramming

This is a messy post. The webpage I have posted is barely organized. Forgive me. I would need a government grant for 75,000.00 to document the crap correctly.

Back in September we sold a motorcycle on Ebay. My mate delivered it when we found out it would cost our buyer more than the bike to have it shipped. You can read about the trip and the refugee he brought back to Michigan to join his family on my blog.

In October we got our usual Verizon phone bill but the amount was extreme. When he went over the bill the mate found the section below and brought it to show me.

It states that for an operator assisted Call collect from Louisianna to MI for 12 minutes we owe them, at the NIGHT RATE, $51.98. As you can imagine, that set off my menopause hormones right NOW. We can get a tire for my truck, 15 gallons of gas, two bags of groceries or, for that much cash, a hooker for a whole hour - not just 12 minutes.

And the mate was never IN Monroe, Louisianna, he was IN Monticello, Arkansas at the Super 8 Motel our buyer arranged for him to stay at. The call was NOT operator assisted, if you count that as a LIVE operator, I pressed one in response to a recording to accept it. The whole thing was wrong and worked out to 4.34 a minute in charges.

You will note, when you go to the bill above, that it says IntegreTel at the top of the section with a phone number to the right labled "For billing questions", HA!

It states "these charges appear as a service to Integretel, Inc." with directions to call the above number or write to California for billing questions. Below THAT is a box that says Billing on behalf of Opticom with another 800 number to call for billing questions.

I went into correct the problem mode at high gear. After 2 hours of being on hold at two phone numbers I gave up the first day. And the second day, the third the line was always busy. I finally got through last week.

The hand written number is the one I ended up calling finally, to find a human to help me with this problem. It took them 47 minutes to get me off hold and14 minutes to explain why these were legal charges and I would have to pay them. I refused. They offered a "one time discount" as we had been unaware of the costs involved in the call. $18.19. I still refused.

I stated that I felt, as there was no posting on the phone he used and no notice of charges before he called that I was NOT paying those rates. They would not budge. I told the nice lady that I would be posting this on the net, complaining to the FCC, and calling my local news sources with this story.

So here we are, Val is hot and wants to know what is going on with rates like these being legal and hits the 'net. Hard. A week later I threw up my hands, gathered my materials and started to write this. I could not possibly track all the complaints, horror stories and legal actions I found on line. There are THOUSANDS of them!

I have started a web page, here, with all the information I have found on cramming, slamming and good, old fashioned rippping off. It is not totally organized but has all the info I could stand to re-post. If you want to play private eye this is the place to start. These companies are more inbred than rats in a well.

I want to make SURE others can correct these charges without putting their phone service at risk. That is why I am posting.

If you get hit with charges like this, or a billing for 900 numbers, a call you didn't make or billing for internet website services you did not order, you are being screwed by companies like these and they call it 'cramming'.

The very first thing you should do is call YOUR phone company. I found out that you can have the charges "RECOURSED" back to the billing company for direct billing from them.

Your phone company can not refuse to "recourse" the charges legally. This means you can then refuse to pay the third party without endangering your credit with the phone company and it removes the leverage the third party biller has over you of ruining your credit.

The second little trick I have run into is the phone company is billing me late fees on the unpaid amount to the third party because the computer has not yet removed the charges from my bill. Now I have to call them again to get thoses charges removed.

And the third cute little trick is I have been being billed for being unlisted but I am in every phone book since we moved. $4.50 a month. They can only remove the charge back to the last released phone book, last November. So they get to KEEP the other EIGHT YEARS of overcharges. $432.00 of our money. So read your bills.

The best very best part of this scam is that the phone companies contract with hotels, airports, prisons and hospitals - places where people have no choice what phone to use - to carry their long distance then PAY a per call fee BACK to these institutions.

How much is it costing our nation for emergency workers and victims of this year's natural disasters for phone calls at 4.34 per MINUTE to let their families know they are all right or needed help! What a low life, yellow bellied, hard hearted, greedy, pus filled, fart powered, hemroid filled, money grubbing scam!

If they get you , recourse the charges and refuse to pay more than your regular long distance would cost. For us it's .05 cents a minute. I owe them sixty cents.

Please, if you want to help others find the information they need to fight this out right theft, put a link to the web page on your sidebars. Call it "Fight Cramming" and link it to http://herway.com/4her/cram1.html . Don't let them suck us dry.