What is the name of your state? Washington state!
Let me know what you guys think of this, I filed a complaint with the State Attorney Generals Office yesterday, it's below the dotted line. This is a new thing for me, I've never have seen it before but it may be more common than I realize. I would have thought it to be legal to do, but apparently I'm incorrect about that. Let me know what you think of this?
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Yesterday, November 12th 2007, while discussing a change to our phone plan with Qwest, my roommate and I wanted to remove the voice mail feature and call waiting, she and I have lived together for 13 years. While discussing with Qwest our phone information we discovered we had a 3rd party company that had attached payments to our phone bill through Qwest for something we had never signed up for. Orbit Telecom had somehow claimed we'd given them permission for payments of $14.95 a month since July 10, 2004 and we don't have a clue who this company even is, nor have we ever used their services! We don't even know what they do. We've always seen them on our phone bill under the heading of "Enhanced Telecommunications Services", but to our knowledge that was nothing more than our extended calling plan with Qwest.
Sometimes it seems it takes a college course to decipher your telephone bill. Needless to say we weren't pleased with this, they've deducted right at 40 months of payments for something we didn't even have knowledge we were paying for, and Qwest surely was no help stating it's not their responsibility to let us know, that the government has let these leech like company's have the ability to attach payments to our phone bill without our having even the slightest notice. We've never received anything from them via real mail before. What a sneaky thing to do to someone. This is nearly $600 worth of payments we certainly never authorized, that we surely can't afford to just throw to the wind, nor were services from Orbit Telecomm ever used. If we'd not discovered them they'd have sat there taking our money forever. That's probably how they work this scheme, they sit there hoping people won't catch on until it's too late.
I told Qwest I wanted this stopped immediately, that I had never given anyone permission to attach any payments to our phone bill and felt terribly cheated that Qwest would allow such a thing to be attached without notifying us in any manner. Their only response was that the government allows that to happen and there's nothing they can do about it, that we should have paid more attention to our bill. Qwest offered to stop any further payments to Orbit Telecom and refund one months payment.
Qwest then put me in contact with Orbit Telecom and I told a lady named Catherine at 1-888-302-3724 that I immediately wanted my money refunded in full, that I had never given them permission in any form or fashion to debit my phone bill $14.95 a month. They explained to me that my roommate had signed up for this on July 10th, 2004 in response to a spam type of coupon offer from unsolicited random email. She had no idea of this nor had she ever heard of Orbit Telecom either.
This is nothing short of a scam, they've stolen right at $600 from us over three years with the help of Qwest by way of Qwest masquerading the bill with a label that gave the appearance of being a charge from them instead of a third party company. This was done in a manner that hid what was happening and we didn't realize it.
Orbit Telecomm has told us they'd refund 20 months of payments, but why should they be allowed to keep half of what they deceitfully took from us, they claimed that 20 months was their limit of refundability. It must be nice to have the power to make such arbitrary decisions on such short notice with the only intent to not have to refund all they've illegally taken. I must say that's quite an easy profit with no expenditure of effort to provide anything other than collecting our cash.
We feel our money was taken from us without our permission, that this was nothing short of theft and we want it returned in full. How can it be acceptable for a business to have these hidden things in spam email that allows them to do this, to attach debits to someone's phone bill in this manner and take their money with the knowledge of the phone company and no acknowledgement to the customer this is happening? It's crooked and it's nothing short of robbery in my opinion, it's almost like one of these places that offers you this or that for free but you have to give them your credit card information first, that it's only free if you sign up for a membership and they sit back hoping and praying that you'll forget to cancel the membership so they can scoop in your cash before you realize you never cancelled what they offered as free up front.
SnowCajun
Let me know what you guys think of this, I filed a complaint with the State Attorney Generals Office yesterday, it's below the dotted line. This is a new thing for me, I've never have seen it before but it may be more common than I realize. I would have thought it to be legal to do, but apparently I'm incorrect about that. Let me know what you think of this?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yesterday, November 12th 2007, while discussing a change to our phone plan with Qwest, my roommate and I wanted to remove the voice mail feature and call waiting, she and I have lived together for 13 years. While discussing with Qwest our phone information we discovered we had a 3rd party company that had attached payments to our phone bill through Qwest for something we had never signed up for. Orbit Telecom had somehow claimed we'd given them permission for payments of $14.95 a month since July 10, 2004 and we don't have a clue who this company even is, nor have we ever used their services! We don't even know what they do. We've always seen them on our phone bill under the heading of "Enhanced Telecommunications Services", but to our knowledge that was nothing more than our extended calling plan with Qwest.
Sometimes it seems it takes a college course to decipher your telephone bill. Needless to say we weren't pleased with this, they've deducted right at 40 months of payments for something we didn't even have knowledge we were paying for, and Qwest surely was no help stating it's not their responsibility to let us know, that the government has let these leech like company's have the ability to attach payments to our phone bill without our having even the slightest notice. We've never received anything from them via real mail before. What a sneaky thing to do to someone. This is nearly $600 worth of payments we certainly never authorized, that we surely can't afford to just throw to the wind, nor were services from Orbit Telecomm ever used. If we'd not discovered them they'd have sat there taking our money forever. That's probably how they work this scheme, they sit there hoping people won't catch on until it's too late.
I told Qwest I wanted this stopped immediately, that I had never given anyone permission to attach any payments to our phone bill and felt terribly cheated that Qwest would allow such a thing to be attached without notifying us in any manner. Their only response was that the government allows that to happen and there's nothing they can do about it, that we should have paid more attention to our bill. Qwest offered to stop any further payments to Orbit Telecom and refund one months payment.
Qwest then put me in contact with Orbit Telecom and I told a lady named Catherine at 1-888-302-3724 that I immediately wanted my money refunded in full, that I had never given them permission in any form or fashion to debit my phone bill $14.95 a month. They explained to me that my roommate had signed up for this on July 10th, 2004 in response to a spam type of coupon offer from unsolicited random email. She had no idea of this nor had she ever heard of Orbit Telecom either.
This is nothing short of a scam, they've stolen right at $600 from us over three years with the help of Qwest by way of Qwest masquerading the bill with a label that gave the appearance of being a charge from them instead of a third party company. This was done in a manner that hid what was happening and we didn't realize it.
Orbit Telecomm has told us they'd refund 20 months of payments, but why should they be allowed to keep half of what they deceitfully took from us, they claimed that 20 months was their limit of refundability. It must be nice to have the power to make such arbitrary decisions on such short notice with the only intent to not have to refund all they've illegally taken. I must say that's quite an easy profit with no expenditure of effort to provide anything other than collecting our cash.
We feel our money was taken from us without our permission, that this was nothing short of theft and we want it returned in full. How can it be acceptable for a business to have these hidden things in spam email that allows them to do this, to attach debits to someone's phone bill in this manner and take their money with the knowledge of the phone company and no acknowledgement to the customer this is happening? It's crooked and it's nothing short of robbery in my opinion, it's almost like one of these places that offers you this or that for free but you have to give them your credit card information first, that it's only free if you sign up for a membership and they sit back hoping and praying that you'll forget to cancel the membership so they can scoop in your cash before you realize you never cancelled what they offered as free up front.
SnowCajun
