
I’m not one to pursue my grudges in public ordinarily, but what follows is your basic consumer warning. Feel free to e-mail this to everybody you know, or at least everybody you know who may still have landline telephone service. I haven’t yet heard of this being applied to anybody’s cell phone bill, but I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility.
Once upon a time, everybody connected a phone modem to their computers to connect to this man’s Internet, bringing in data the way a coffee maker slowly drips brew into a carafe. Along came the miracle of technology called broadband, and in the semi-rural backwater in which I live, the first company to offer such high-speed access to the Web back at the beginning of the Aughts was my phone company, Sprint. (Sprint was originally a long-distance provider and is currently a cell phone service, but early on they came into ownership of a number of small landline phone companies around the country, including my local provider, United.)
I’ve been their phone customer for going on 14 years and a happy broadband user for almost nine now, because they have provided good service, giving me what I couldn’t get elsewhere and responding quickly to service issues. I’m on my second no-charge broadband modem, for example, and I’ve only had two service outages in my entire history with the firm, one of which was combined with a power outage so I couldn’t have used the Web anyway.
Over time, Sprint spun off their landline assets into a company called Embarq, and despite the funny name the good service continued. They periodically analyzed my bill, called me up and said things like, “Hey, would you be interested in 5-megabit access for less than what you’re paying now for 768k?” Or, “We just cut the price of your broadband by $5 a month.”
Several months ago, Embarq merged, or was taken over more likely, by CenturyTel, a similar but smaller rural landline provider, and now my bills come from the merged entity, CenturyLink. And that’s where the story really begins.
My first couple of bills under the merged entity showed nothing to be concerned about, just my recent charges. But my latest bill, which arrived a couple of days ago, was $36 heavier thanks to something called “third-party providers.” Under this category was two bills from the following companies: OAN Services, touting something called “Instant 411″ for $14.95 a month, and Hold Billing Services, with a $20 bill for “CMI Exclusive.”
I never did find out what “Instant 411″ was, though I assume it is some kind of unnecessary information service that you can access by dialing 411 on your landline. Turns out when I Google “Instant 411″ my search window prompts “Instant 411 scam.” Apparently customers of AT&T and Verizon are also getting scammed by this company.
Even better is “CMI Exclusive,” which turns out to be a membership fee to a celebrity news website. Anybody with the slightest exposure to the regular news media knows that there is no shortage of free celebrity news in every medium from the New York Times on down to billions and billions of entertainment blogs. The idea that some weak-minded person would be stupid enough to pay $20 a month for a celebrity news website does not surprise me, but if I had to put together a business model for such an enterprise in this day and age, I’d tell the principals involved that Internet fraud would have to be a big part of the plan.
My first phone call, naturally, was to the newly minted CenturyLink to scream at them. They pleaded ignorance, they’re “supposed” to pass along such charges — indeed, CenturyLink passes along third-party bills “for your convenience,” as it says on the bill. They did offer to block my bill from further charges from these two vendors, but I was told I had to deal with both of them individually to get refunded.
This was an annoyance, of course, but I moved forward. OAN proved to be not too terribly difficult to deal with; after the usual period of holding in Beelzebub’s telephonic waiting room with a minimum of annoying hold music, I spoke to an operator who put up a bit of resistance, but when she tried to confirm an e-mail address that nobody in my family has ever held and I called her on it, she finally agreed to cancel the service and refund my money through CenturyLink. (The e-mail was “first-initial-last-name@eudoramail.com,” just for completeness’ sake. Nothing against Eudora Mail, but I have never even used the Eudora e-mail client, let alone signed up for e-mail service.)
Hold Billing Services proved to be a bit more devious. The name alone is a bit of a tipoff — “Do you wish to speak to billing services? Please hold” — and sure enough, they subjected me to a fairly lengthy wait on hold with no sound whatsoever. (My guess is that the no-sound technique prompts people to give up after a short time, thinking the call was dropped.) After going six rounds with a more determined operator who absolutely assured me that my wife signed up for their celebrity news service with open eyes and keen anticipation, I asked her to confirm my wife’s e-mail address. Sure enough, it was the same bogus e-mail used with OAN. When she tried to resist further, I suggested she send all future invoices for her service to that e-mail address instead of CenturyLink. At that point she finally agreed to cancel my “subscription.” I immediately demanded that she not only cancel but issue a refund, but she said I had to contact “billing” to get a refund.
So back into hold, this time with a message that if the call was interrupted I should call a different number than the one I originally called. Sure enough, the call dropped entirely. I punched in the new number and went back into voicemail hell. (Having a speakerphone helps in these situations, as I could go back to whatever I was doing before CenturyLink attempted to turn a Dyson vacuum cleaner on my wallet.) After a lengthy wait, again with the silent treatment in between, I got a guy with a pronounced Hindu accent. Apparently it’s OK at Hold Billing Services for native English speakers to try and convince you to keep the service, but if you want your money back a few misunderstandings are fine and dandy. The guy was more accommodating, however, and promised to issue a credit through CenturyLink.
Hold Billing Services apparently has a long history of this sort of thing, by the way. Note the safeguards checklist in this release and ask yourself when was the last time you even saw a listing for a 900- number.
Sound like I’ve been made whole? Maybe. Some of the Web postings I’ve read since encountering this double-barreled scam suggest that billings from these companies have been known to continue. And though each of them issued me a confirmation number, at least one posting told of the company disavowing any knowledge of such a confirmation number when contacted subsequently.
Now to repeat, this is probably not CenturyLink’s fault alone, as ATT and Verizon customers have also been victimized by these scammers. The cheats are simply piggybacking on established laws and policies that made it easy for MCI Long Distance to bill their services to Bell Atlantic customers. Nevertheless, there has to be some limit to this nonsense in the Internet age, when anybody can present bills to phone companies that appear legit after harvesting the info from faked websites. My wife apparently was the conduit for this bit of scamming, as she occasionally downloads puzzle games for her laptop, and she recalled giving our landline number to one such company. I’ve heard that you can get similarly phished from downloading ringtones, desktop pictures and icon packages, browser toolbars, those dress-up dolls you see in online ads, and other such non-essential effluvia.
I’m sending an old-school snail mail letter to CenturyLink as soon as I can harvest a useful address for it. In the meantime, be careful when folks from non-household-name companies ask for excessive amounts of information in exchange for that Tetris-lookalike game or a Susan Boyle ringtone. Especially be careful about your phone numbers; if they’re not required, don’t provide them, and if they are required, stop and ask yourself if the transaction is worth the possible hassle.
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