Gayatri
United States of America#2Author of original report
Wed, January 20, 2010
I just got off the phone with AT & T. I spoke to one Ms. Tracy (no last name, as usual) and she told me that BY LAW, AT & T could not prevent third party billing. So, anyone can charge you anything via your phone bill and you just have to pay it. Her 'advice' was to take it up with ESBI and tell THEM to stop charging me, even though I repeatedly told her that the charges are bogus and constitute fraud / scam and that I could not understand why AT & T was not protecting my account from such charges. She ALSO told me that she could not place a 'lock' on my account as it would be AGAINST THE LAW TO DO SO. Please get this - it is against the law to prevent thieves from charging you unauthorized charges through your phone bill.
I told her that I would be disconnecting my land line if these charges appeared on my next bill and she did not seem to care. She offered to reverse the charges this time but kept insisting that this was not AT & T's problem but mine (and to deal with ESBI directly).
Why isn't there a class action lawsuit already and what is the CPUC doing? It seems that the CPUC's law forcing local phone carriers to permit third party billing is helping thieves like ESBI to get away with ripping off consumers. What is the FTC doing? How can they possibly be unaware that ESBI is at it again, despite the FTC's strong censure of ESBI back in 2001?