Complaint Review: Integrated Services - USBI

Telemarketer from company called my company representing themselves as a VERIZON representative (the phone service we already had)and offering our company a reduction on long distance calling services. At no time was the name of the actual company that was calling, Intergrated Services, or their billing company USBI, ever mentioned during the call. Pretending to be a verizon rep, the telemarketer deviously got me to agree to a new long distance service plan. My company has used Verizon for all our phone services for 5 years and I would have had no interest in changing to a different service.

When I received our next company phone bill, I noticed a new section of long distance charges by a company I had never heard of: Integrated Services, billed by USBI. I immediately called the billing company listed, USBI, to ask what this was for. They said they could not tell me but transferred me to Integrated Services customer service. Upon being told by the customer svc. rep. Nikki that I had "agreed" to sign up for long distance service from Integrated Services, I said I certainly had not done so and requested them to immediately cancel the account and credit out bill for the call services. She said they would do so. I then called Verizon to have them re-instate the previous call service, which I was happy with all along!

Then, Upon receiving the next bill in late Sept, there was another large amount of Integrated Services charges for long distance. I called Integrated Services customer services yet again to request that they refund that entire amount and they refused. Keela, the supervisor I spoke with, then played me an incredibly distorted recording of what she said was their initial telemarketing call with me from 7/14/08. The recording was clearly doctored and did NOT represent the actual phone call that was made. Most of the recording was so bad in quality that the actual words cannot be understood and my "response" was clearly doctored to simply have my voice repeat "yes" in answer to all their questions. This company used deceptive practices to sign up my company for a service I did not request. Given the deception, me and my employees believed that any long distance calls made by my company between 7/14/08 and 8/15/08 were being charged as usual under our Verizon account. Hence, we had no idea that we were being billed by a different company at higher rates than we were already getting via our existing Verizon accounts.

David huntley
Sudbury, Massachusetts
U.S.A.