Some answers, more questions in Internet/phone scam

January 8, 2006

Harry Yost\Valley Voices

Since the first installment in this continuing saga of the Integretel telephone/Internet scam in the Dec. 9 issue of the Frontiersman, I've managed to track down some more answers. As noted in the earlier article, I contacted the Alaska attorney general's Consumer Protection Unit, and they sent me a complaint form, which I promptly filled out and returned.

They sent the complaint to Integretel with a 10-day deadline for an answer. Integretel asked for, and received, an extension to Dec. 22. The AG's office says Integretel met that deadline, but the person handling the complaint now has to wait for a &#8220legal review” of the answer before giving me any information.

In addition, I mailed a complaint to the Federal Communications Commission. They, in turn, sent back a Form 475, which I filled out and have returned to them. With the form was a &#8220Consumer Facts” enclosure giving information about &#8220Cramming.”

To quote from it: &#8220Cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading or deceptive charges on your telephone bill. Entities that fraudulently cram people appear to rely largely on confusing telephone bills in order to mislead consumers into paying for services that they did not authorize or receive.” (That's exactly what happened to us.)

The fact sheet gives several suggestions to protect yourself. Some highlights:

1- Carefully review your phone bill every month. Treat your telephone service like any other major consumer purchase. Review your monthly bills just as closely as you review your monthly credit card and bank statements.

2- If the charge for a call or service is unclear, ask the company that billed the charge to explain the service provided before paying the charge.

3- Make sure you know what service was provided, even for small charges. Crammers often try to go undetected by submitting $2 or $3 charges to thousands of consumers.

4- Keep records of the services you have authorized and used, including 900 numbers and other types of telephone information services.

Simply, be suspicious of any entry on your telephone bill that is for a service you don't remember authorizing, or for numbers you don't remember calling, especially if they are from a telecommunications organization other than your regular company. Follow up on anything you are suspicious of. Don't just grumble about the bill, do something.

Probing further into this maze, we discovered in addition to Integretel and our local telephone utility, there was one other firm involved. This organization is called Verisign. Integretel forwards a charge to Verisign, which has a contract with our local utility to forward charges originating outside the local service area.

Integretel's Web site gives the following information: &#8220Founded in 1988, Integretel addressed a significant billing and collections need by creating a Service Bureau business model focused entirely on telecommunications billing. Integretel established a full compliment of billing and collection agreements with Local Exchange Carriers (LEC's) including each &#8220Baby Bell” and approximately 1,400 smaller, independent LEC's. Integretel has been operating from its San Jose, Calif., headquarters since the company's inception and has processed over $6 billion in client transactions.”

Verisign's Web site states this about the firm: &#8220Verisign Inc. (NASDAQ: VRSN) operates intelligent infrastructure services that enable and protect billions of interactions every day across the world's voice and data networks. Every day, we process over 14 billion Internet interactions and 3 billion telephone interactions. We also provide the services that help over 3,000 enterprises and 450,000 Web sites to operate securely, reliably, and efficiently.”

Wow! These are big operations! Interestingly, when I tried to get Integretel's telephone number from the San Jose operator, they weren't listed. I needed two numbers to fill out the FCC complaint form. I had the 800 number given me by our local telephone company, and I tried to get a local listing for the firm from their local utility. I finally found another 800 number on their Web page, which was supposed to give information about their services. I used both 800 numbers on the complaint.

In contrast, Verisign's Web page lists three numbers: an 800 number for Investor Relations; another number for Public Relations, and a third number for Worldwide contacts. Public Relations and Worldwide numbers were toll calls.