<p>I have spent over 2 hours this morning trying to get 2 new billing items off my small business phone bill. The first was for ILD Teleservices, Inc. and the second was for Enhanced Services Billing, Inc.</p>
<p>Apparently, people sign up for these services on the internet and insert a phone number for billing purposes. The same person did that for both of these services using one of my business telephone numbers - one that is a back-up, rollover number that is rarely used for outgoing calls. I had never heard of the name, address and email address of the person that signed up for these services.</p>
<p>The lesson for the day - watch your phone bill carefully for new billing items. One of the service operators admitted to me that people do this on a regular basis. You can try to block the ability to add services via the internet with your local phone company.</p>
<p>My parents recently got rid of their land line because they had started billing them for something without their consent. I wonder if my parents got conned in a similar fashion?</p>
<p>On a related note, I’m getting sick of phone companies! I had switched my number to a local number and they never billed me and shut off my service after a month…Umm…I would have paid a bill if I knew what I owed…they apologized and said a bill was on the way…over a week later…nothing! </p>
<p>Lesson #2: If you move and change your cell number (with Verizon), get your new account number! They won’t tell you that you can’t access your billing online with your old account ID…Get all of the information and call when you think something is fishy…</p>
<p>UMDAD, Do you really believe that someone (an unaffiliated person) signed up for a service that they benefit from on the internet and had the service billed to your phone number? I think it is more likely that these companies provide no service at all, but bill small amounts to thousands of phone numbers. The profit potential is huge. </p>
<p>I actually looked up both companies on the internet and they look legitimate.</p>
<p>What concerns me is that someone can sign up for a service via the internet and the service provider does not call the phone number which is given to them for billing purposes to verify the legitimacy of the service connection.</p>
<p>We just happened to look closely at our phone bill this month and found charges for call forwarding services (one if line is busy and one if there is no answer). When I called to complain that we never requested this service, I learned that we had been paying this (albeit small fee) for over a year. I insisted that the phone company investigate the number that my calls were supposedly forwarded to. After checking, it appeared that the number was not a working number and they credited my account for the entire time the fee was charged. </p>
<p>We have no idea how this happened, but we have learned that the bill should be reviewed regularly, even if they make it nearly impossible to understand.</p>
<p>If you are going to be checking old phone bills you might want to add up your actual excise taxes paid from Feb. 28, 2003, to Aug. 1, 2006. You can apply for refund of actual taxes paid or just take a standard $60.</p>
<p>I looked at my son’s cell phone bill and found that we had been paying to have the free weekends (which are automatically included) last 2 hours longer or start 2 hours earlier or something like that. It was something like $8 a month, and we had been paying for a long time without realizing it. I had it taken off immediately, but I am still annoyed. It is just a big scam!</p>
<p>I haven’t had a land line since I graduated college, and have no plans on going back. To hell with Ma Bell! (despite any breakup rumors you might have heard, its still all Ma Bell)</p>
<p>MotherofTwo,
I just got a cell phone bill that had $63 of extra calling charges on it. I too have free weekend minutes that they were charging me for. The amazing thing is that in getting this straightened out, I talked to 3 different billing representitives and finally had to call a supervisor to get satisfaction. The first person was right on and said that I had been charged by mistake and that all of the money should be credited to me. End of story, I thought. The next day I got a call from another billing rep who said that the first one was mistaken and that I should be charged for all the calls because they were in the evening and I only have free weekend minutes. I told him that I didn’t believe that was true and that I needed to look at the specific calls (he wouldn’t discuss them over the phone). After I got online and looked at my calling record, I talked to a third billing rep and they told me that I owed the part of the $63 bill that was over the 50 minutes that was alotted for my calling plan. To come up with this conclusion, she included some of my (free) weekend minutes in the 50 minutes and said that anything over 50 minutes during the month should be charged! That was when I asked to speak to the supervisor who agreed that I should be credited the entire amount as my non-weekend minutes were under 50 minutes. I tried to relate to her that I got 3 different answers from 3 different employees, but she wasn’t very receptive to my comment that they needed more training to understand how calling plans work. Needless to say, my contract ends in June and I’ll strongly consider changing companies!</p>