Integretel $40 For 2 Phone Calls? What The? sneaky, illegal, unauthorized hacking ripoff Internet
I received a phone bill from my local phone company. It showed the normal services, plus the credit I received because I recently cancelled with them.
Then I saw a 1 minute phone call to Austria for $1.88 on 2/4/06. Austria? I don't know a soul from Austria, & I don't even have long distance service on my phone so how can I call Austria?
Then on the next page I saw 2 phone calls to 2 different 900#s, at $40 per phone call. 2 minutes each. What the?? And who or what is Atlantic Mgmt? I called the # provided, which was for "The Billing Resource" and spoke with a Sean. He was helpful only by providing info about a "dialer" being installed on my computer.
I had never heard of this. Dialer? He went on to explain about certain sites that do this i.e., porn sites, games, etc. I don't ever go to sites like that so this was even more perplexing. Sean from The Billing Resource also told me to go to a site called integratel.com for more info.
The website didn't exist when first typed in but I think I spelled it wrong. Fortunately I read someone's entry here, saw that his computer crashed from typing it in, so I won't be doing that now.
I also called the company responsible for billing the call to Austria, spoke w/Daniel who said he'd put in a request for the charge to be waived; he gave me a confirm# & said for me to call back in 3 business days to find out if it was waived. I will be doing that tomorrow.
I also called upon my former ISP & asked for a usage printout for the dates of the calls made. I had connection problems during the time these charges were incurred & found it totally impossible that I was online when they were. They refused to do give me the usage report. So I am nowhere on this, which leads me here.
From reading other rip off entries, I now believe that my connection problems were due to the dialer. I ended up cancelling my service because of it.
Thank God for this website because it was here that I gained an eduation on this. I just don't know where to go from here!
Sarah
Hicksville, New York
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Sarah
Hicksville,New York,
U.S.A.
Special Thanx to "J" in St Petersburg, FL
#2Author of original report
Tue, March 14, 2006
After reading J's entry regarding Integretel, i decided to take the same route. This would be my second and last phone call to them. The first phone call was just for the background details. I wrote a list of my questions, modeled after J's and let loose on Marcie at Integretel. After asking for the phone # in question, my first and last name (she needed the spelling for each), I asked her why she needed that info if her company was responsible for billing me. She gave me some bogus crap about how they had to log the info in their system to bring up my details. She pretty much had the same things to say as the person J spoke to. I kept asking her about the downloaded software and if i could have a detailed receipt showing what was downloaded. She said she was unable to provide that. When asked what the software does she said the user goes in with a username and a password to access the software. User? You mean ME? She said yes. I said, if that's so, then may i please have both the user id and password? No, it's against privacy laws. I heated up. I said, you're billing me fraudulently, you can't give me any info about WHY you're billing me, aren't YOU the one who is infringing on MY privacy?
I asked for it to be credited. Then came the 50% reduction "deal". I asked for 100%. No, she can't do that. I said well then maybe when I alert the FTC, the FCC, and my lawyer, the reduction will be 100%. She gave me her supervisor Marissa. She too offered the 50% "deal. I said i would take it but that the other 50% would have to be handled by the FTC, the FCC and my lawyer. She said she would grant the 100% credit because i was "threatening" her. I told her i wasn't threatening her, i was exercising my rights as a consumer. She asked for my billing cycle and said it would be credited.
So i wait.
But a huge thank you to J in St Petersburg because i would have been one of those people asking dumb questions. Pray that my bill is credited.