Unsolicited and then rude
Complaint
D. J. Cecil
Country: United States
I answered one of the many "unknown caller", "unknown number" calls today and someone actually was on the other end, unfortunately. The woman gave me her name (which I didn't catch) and said she was with EZ Yellow Pages and needed to update our business information before the invoice was sent out. Oh, I need to state that she asked for the owner (my husband) by his first name and then I asked if I could help her. As soon as she said "before we send out the invoice" I informed her we would not accept any invoice from the company. She said okay they would delete all of our advertising and no one would be able to find us by the end of the week. I am really tired of having to put up with these sort of callers, especially when they are just rude and as far as I'm concerned, obnoxious. They don't even give a person a chance to tell them "take this number off your calling list".
Isn't there anything that can be done about phone numbers and identities that are hidden from the called party?
Isn't there anything that can be done about phone numbers and identities that are hidden from the called party?
Comments
Why does VERIZON aid these crooks in this kind of a rip-off when they know it's a scam? The VERIZON lady admitted to me that they are recieving many calls concerning these scams. Older folks don't need this kind of agravation (when, in fact nobody does). I believe it behooves VERIZON to retrieve these scam payments for there faithful costomers.
In some states, ATT and Verizon have reached settlement agreements regarding how they handle consumer disputes of suspect charges.
What are the charges on your phone bill labeled?
Is it some sort of vague, innocuous, or deceptive description?
You don't have a business, so they don't even have an excuse for taking your money. What "listing" are they claiming you "authorized"?
Most directory scams operate by trying to intimidate small businesses into paying a yearly fee, sometimes claiming they "already published the listing" so "it's too late to cancel". They have often not had access to the billing aggregators for submitting charges against phone bills. The ones that have used that route have been for things like phony "web services", "internet services", or "voice mail", often submitted as small monthly charges to slip by small business accounts payable departments by hiding it in the phone bills. Several of those have been shut down.
Your complaint would show that they may have adjusted their tactics to cramming their fraudulent charges onto phone bills, with the usual pattern of small monthly charges employed to reduce the chance they will be noticed.
This manner of submitting their charges requires the assistance of a billing aggregator, since phone companies will not just accept charges from any company. What billing aggregator are they using?
http://www.complaints.com/2008/october/2/Watch_Your_Phone_Bills_187440.htm
UnitedTEL is a billing aggregator, capable of submitting third party charges onto local phone company phone bills.
http://www.unitedtel.com/
Cramming complaint against UnitedTEL:
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Internet-Fraud/UnitedTel-247MP3-com/unitedtel-247mp3-com-fraudulen-728a7.htm
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/united-tel-llc-c140102.html
http://www.ripoffreport.com/Telemarketers/Enhanced-Services-Bi/enhanced-services-billing-inc-mea65.htm
68 cramming complaints against "findyourdiet.com" indicating fraudulent charges crammed onto phone bills through UnitedTEL, starting in Feb. 2009 up to the present.
http://classactionconnect.com/consumer-compla ... -phone-charges/
Federal class action lawsuit: Cotton v. UnitedTel, ESBI, and ClickSpark, which all appear to be related.
http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-mndce/ ... case_id-105686/
http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/02/20/PhoneBilling.pdf
BBB report on UnitedTel, rated "F".
Note that most complaints are categorized as "Selling Practices" or "Credit or Billing Disputes", categories consistent with "cramming".
http://www.bbb.org/upstate-new-york/business- ... r-ny-202958385/
FTC settlement with ESBI, back in 2001. ESBI is barred from illegally billing consumers.
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2001/08/billing3.shtm
http://blogs.mcall.com/bill_white/2005/08/cramming.html
If Verizon fails to reverse fraudulent charges, Verizon and the billing aggregator might be violating federal mail fraud laws if they continue to knowingly send bills containing fraudulent charges through the U.S. Mail.
Most complaints against them have them calling small businesses or non-profits, and this appears to be the main group they are targeting. They may be getting their phone numbers by buying business lists, but they also appear to be harvesting them from websites and other online directories, since some complaints indicate their calls starting weeks after other on-line ads were placed.
Their manner of "marketing" appears to be to try to create the appearance of an already existing "on-line advertising agreement", sometimes through deceptive recorded "authorizations", and then use threats to coerce payment, allegedly for a whole year. There are, however, at least 3 complaints of using LEC billing aggregators to cram monthly charges onto phone bills.
Other types of fraudulent telemarketing boiler room operations have targeted vulnerable populations, such as seniors targeted for phony "sweepstakes" or "investment" scams. As a result, "sucker" lists of vulnerable seniors are available for purchase, either selected by age, or by gullibility or past susceptibility to fraud.
Although this operation has mostly been reported to target businesses via threats, their access to a willing billing aggregator with a history of cramming complaints, their focus on targeting of vulnerable "customers", their extensive use of deception as a tactic, the above report of phone cramming of a senior citizen non-business victim, and the availability of senior citizen "sucker lists", open the possibility that they may be cold cramming charges against vulnerable consumers identified through "sucker lists", without any attempt to even call as a pretense. (Why bother when you are cramming "business services" onto non-business residential phone bills?)
Report it.
Datascension appears to be a survey company with a call center in Costa Rica. Although there appear to be the usual complaints of unwanted calls, I see no connection with telemarketing.
http://esignal.brand.edgar-online.com/EFX_dll ... RbzV&ID=6539729
I feel particularly annoyed at this because the woman that called me was implying that we were already advertising with them and this was to renew our listing. Trusting her word (shame on me), I said OK, but later found out from my president that we do not. Luckily I wrote down the 800# and confirmation # (that they hastily muttered to me) so I IMMEDIATELY called back and canceled the order.
for instances if the person on the other side of the phone sounded irritated, you will hung up on him and call later again.. so the chances to get rid of them are very low.. i hate them