Tele Sales, Phone cards, mis informed

[julieowen24]

Gainesville, Georgia,

I was contacted by a tele sales person re a phone card, that would be 10 c a minute and was to be used on my phone, I signed up, after reading the information that seemed to imply the same as I was told, however, it turns out I should not have used this card on my home phone, and I have been charged up to a dollar a minute for my phone calls. The problem arises that I got this phone card on the understanding that I could use it on my phone ( as I do not have long distance, or international) through the 1800 number that the card had, the lady who sold me the card said such, I know have a phone bill over $100 more than I was spending with my previous card, I have contacted the company but they are just sending me the pre written emails, as they are not answering any of my questions, do I have any legal rights over this, I have just moved here from the UK, so I am unsure of the way to go with this, but I would not have got the card if I had known this. The card was not cheaper than the card I originally had, (they said using the card was 10c a minute, however it had a 9.9% tax on which made it the same price as the card I originally had)

 

[JETX]

I think this confusion may in fact be two separate issues, each with separate possible resolutions.

1) Card use: If I understand your post correctly, you purchased a 'calling card' that can be accessed via an 800 (tollfree) number. This should normally not be contingent on the physical location that you are calling from (as long as it is a US Phone), but you seem to be claiming that it is restricted in some way and thereby incurs higher charges if used from your 'home' phone ("it turns out I should not have used this card on my home phone"). What is the location of your 'home' phone where you used this card?? Please provide some specifics of this use and how it accrues additional charges.

2) Taxes: You post that you recently arrived from the UK. "Over there", you do not have a separate sales tax as we do, which is charged to the consumer on an 'as used' basis. Is it possible that you assumed the phone card had V.A.T. (Value Added Tax) included as you are used to in the UK??? If so, then this is really just an error in assumption and the 'sales tax' would be correct as an additional charge.

 

[julieowen24]

Thank you, for trying to help me out, I will try to be as specific as Possible,

Your 2nd point about the sales tax is correct, although the shop bought cards including tax came to a lower charge than that of this card that I am upset about,

When I was contacted, about this card I was told it would be 10c a min to phone the UK, state to state would be 7c a minute, and long distance 14c a minute. I explained to the sales rep that I could NOT make long distance calls from my phone due to the phone company wanting an obscene deposit as we are from the UK and have no credit rating over here, however through using the phone cards bought at various shops using a 1800 number this got rid of that problem, and also we could keep an eye on what we were spending.

We were then offered this phone cards at the above rates, and were told that we should use the card at home. now it appears, that we should have just dialled 1 and then we would have got the rates mentioned, ( but are phone couldn't do this) and instead I was charged about 85c a min and a connection charge, (even though I was told I was paying $3.95 a month to avoid this).

The 2nd major problem that I have with this card, is since talking to customer services that the card rates when not used on your own phone would be as mentioned above, however I went to Canada, and using the same toll free number, I phoned Florida at 10c a minute as I would expect, I then phoned England and it was $ 1 a minute, and a connection charge, both international calls, but one was far more than expected.

Do you think that I should just forget this and chalk it up to experience, or is there a chance that I may be able to get some sort of compensation for the over charge, all I really want is to be charged the rates that I was told that I would be charged.

I don't know if this means anything, but I also received a phone call from them saying that my phone company, did not allow me to make the phone calls to UK and Long distance so they were taking the service off me, this is a bit late for me, but that to me says that they new that I could not make the calls with out the card.

Thankyou

 

[julieowen24]

Sorry forgot to say, my home phone, is a land line, in my house in Gainesville Georgia, it certainly seems that the card is dependant upon the location as on my bill it has all the numbers that I phoned from, even though I used the 1800 number

Thank you

 

[JETX]

I would certainly exhaust all reasonable efforts to try to resolve this dispute. But, once that is done (phone and maybe letters), I would feel that this is a 'lesson learned'.

Sorry, that you had to learn it this way.... we are really pretty good 'Yanks'.