Complaint Review: OVM - OAN - ILD - Verizon

They are using internet sign-up scams as a why to pad telephone bills. You sign on to a website which also signs you up for OVM's monthly toll-free number providing service. They send you a confirmation/cancellation email which looks like spam, and you delete it, so within 72 hours they feel it's a valid contract.

The monthly one time sign up charge of $15.74 (plus taxes of .47) comes from ILD Teleservices (800) 433-4518 on behalf of Optimum Voice Mail. The $29.99 monthly charge comes from OAN Services. (800)944-0171.

Calling OAN got the monthly credited, and future billing canceled. ILD says "It's a valid charge for setting up the service for you, we won't credit it." I asked for an email telling me what the url was. If it looked anywhere near legit, I would pay it. The email that came was basically a boilerplate confirmation of cancellation, no usefull information, and no credit.

The Verizon bill says "Your local telephone service will not be disconnected for failure to pay the charges on this portion of your bill. If you fail to pay these charges, the service provider may pursue collections independantly."

So I call Verizon, with whom I have automatic withdrawal. I tell them I want a credit, and after a long time, the very friendly CSR says she's not allowed to. She'd called ILD and said "But what if a kid signed up for this?" Their response was "Kids would go to a game site, not a recipe site like this." She also asked "What percentage of these charges are allowed." Their answer was 90%.

Unfortunately, she couldn't change the automatic withdrawal to only pay their portion of the bill, so I had to cancel it, and will mail a check solely for Verizon's portion.

I sent an email back to OVM, cc'ing some tv station investigation emails, and got a phone call from OVM that night, at about 8:30. The long and short of it is that he would credit me the one-time signup fee, and contact ILD and tell them that they should be forwarding customers with those complaints through to OVM, and not denying credits. He called it a "communications error."

Basically, "they" are counting on a certain percentage of people (a) not noticing the billing for a few months, (b) calling to cancel and giving up, (I had to call OVM FOUR TIMES before I finally got it done. One time they fwd'd me to a Hurricane Katrina help service) and (c) canceling everything but paying the $15 sign up fee because 6 phone calls and an email is too much bother!

As someone else pointed out on this site, these are big, slick business operating these scams, and Verizon is implicit merely by association with them. Southampton, NY is a tony little town way out on the east end of Long Island. There is no hub of teleservices out there, but it's probably convenient to the mansion of one of the owners. (see /Corrupt-Companies/OAN-Services-ACI-Bil/oan-services-aci-billing-b-938BS.htm&view=printer)

The last thing I pointed out to the OVM rep who called to smooth things over was that in many cases, "They is us." I almost believe I made the guy think seriously about it, but I'm a dreamer. ;-)

B.J.
Old Westbury, New York
U.S.A.