Scam2Phone: The latest phone billing scam is a play on the term Bill2Phone. However, Bill2phone is a legal way for persons to transact business using their phone number. The scam appears to develop when persons fraudulently obtain and use other people's identification data and attributes on the internet. For example, our family was recently victimized by such a "scam". An extra phone bill page recently started appearing in the monthly bill with TWO new voicemail accounts and "discount network" account. The charges so far? $ 126.78. Inadvertently, the account holder paid this bill as he/she did not want their service disconnected. One of us contacted one of the account "providers" and were asked if we had signed on to the site "US Prize Draw dot com". Nope. Never did - until today. Complaints are being filed with the FCC. If you 'google' some of the labels for this post, you should get a universe of hits regarding this 'scam'. We haven't even contacted our senator or congressperson - yet.
Updated/Revised: Monday, February 1, 2010: Resolution! We contacted AT&T Billing over the internet (yester)day. We told them what was wrong, what our actions and suspicions and conclusions were...you know... Their website said to expect a call from their rep in 2 or 3 business days. Hah! They called the same day and left a message. They are issuing a credit of $ 126.80 (maybe next month or so...) and blocking the questionable accounts. You should have heard the tone of their message. The rep sounded quite concerned and even desperate... We told our victimized family member this morning. He/she is still sharp enough to ask "What about those accounts on that bill?". We told them that those people/outfits had been blocked by AT&T Billing from his/her account. Double Hah! No further word yet except for a "cutesy-poo" email from AT&T saying "Welcome to AT&T"! We're not buying it....
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