MyTelecomGuru.com

How to Determine if Third Party Billing is on Your Phone Bill

shilocase — Wed, 21 May 2008 23:16:31 +0000

What are “Third-party Billers?” Some of them include: Basic Access, USBI, ESBI, PaymentOne.com ETS. What are these charges? Who authorized them? How do you get rid of them?

First, you’ll need to know that removing these charges is a process; it takes time and patience. These companies, although unjustified in charging you these charges, will not go away very easily. Take good notes and document every call you make to them. Make them prove that you or someone in your family authorized those charges. Get confirmation numbers etc.

Step 1: Look carefully at page 1 of your bill — You will see the standard charges from your phone service company first. On the next line will be your long distance charges (if you don’t get billed separately from your LD company). The next line(s) will have any charges from companies that are NOT your local phone company or long distance carrier. There are hundreds of companies out there who are allowed to bill on your phone bill. Unfortunately, due to FCC and local Public Utilities Commission guidelines, your phone company is required to bill charges from third party companies who present requests for payment. So, your phone company has no obligation to determine the validity of the charges. In fact, most inquiries about these companies can only be answered by those companies! Note: If the charges are for long distance calls from someone other than your carrier, see my article “How to Handle Getting Slammed.”

Step 2: Look at the specific charges — The first page of your bill will tell you on which page the charges are itemized. It will also provide you with the phone number of the company that is billing you. This is usually not the company that is charging you. The companies that are charging you are usually so small enough that they find it cheaper to pay a company that has a relationship with your phone company than to handle the cost of billing you directly. As a result, the third party billers themselves will rarely give you credit for the charges or even explain what they are for. They simply provide a buffer between your phone company and the company charging you. Go to the page where the charges show. Here you will find the company charging you. By law, they must provide a phone number to reach them.

Step 3: Try to remember events in the last month or two — Have you accepted any collect calls recently? Did you sign up for online advertising? These may be the legitimate charges for those services. Usually, though, these charges appear after someone calls you pretending to represent your phone company. Sometimes, they offer you great deals that don’t really exist and if you answer “yes” to any of their questions, they will use that recording as proof of authorization. This is completely unethical and illegal; however, if you don’t complain to authorities, these companies don’t get caught! Your phone company cannot verify the validity of their actions by law, because it is in all senses none of their business!

Step 4: Call the company that is charging you — Do NOT call you phone company first. Call the number listed on the page where the itemized charges appear and ask what they represent. Inform the company that there has been a mistake and that you do not wish to be signed up for whatever they have you subscribed to. Kindly ask that they provide you with credit for the charges. If they agree, go to step 6, if they do not agree or they hang up (yes, this happens often), see step 5 first.

Step 5: Call your phone company — Now it is appropriate to call you local phone service provider. Inform them that you have been charged for a service that you did not wish to be subscribed to an that you would like the charges to be sent back to that company. Next, ask that the put in a request to stop billing from that company. This request does not require a response from the company charging you for up to 60 days, so do not be surprised if you see the charges on the following 2 months of bills. You may have to call your phone company twice more to have the charges sent back.

Step 6: Inform the authorities — No, don’t call the cops. There are, however, a few consumer advocates that should know about this: The Federal Communications Commission or FCC. Check out their website at FCC.gov and contact The Public Utilities Commission or PUC. A list is found here with your state. Every state has one, though their name may be different. Look on your state’s official website to learn more. You can also try the Better Business Bureau. BBB.org

Courageous Commissioner – Capping Costs

Apprentice Guru — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 07:40:13 +0000

This entry is in reponse to the article posted on the New York Sun entitled Grilling a Responsible Commissioner by Harold Furchtgott-Roth.

One of most common questions we encounter is “what is this on my phone bill.” Specifically, the Universal Service Fund – what is it? The fund was created as part of the Act of 1996, primarily as a continuation of the pre-existing programs to provide federal support for high-cost incumbent rural telephone companies and low-income households. The program has muchroomed from $2 billion to more than $7 billion because the pre-existing programs have grown. This growth includes nearly $2.25 billion towards school and library funds and a large program for new-entrant telecommunication providers to encourage competition for lower rates.

Granted, some of this may be Greek to you but the bottom line, Commissioner Deborah Taylor-Tate has taken a stand to temporarily cap the Universal Service Fund fees on your phone bill. That’s virtually under heard of in the Government; that’s virtually unheard of in business. I nominate Ms. Tate to go after the oil companies to temporarily cap gas prices. Good job and thanks Ms. Tate for doing the right thing.

Haunt You on the Back-end

Diania Turner — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 16:30:51 +0000

Let’s talk about money. Very often as a consultant, customers approach me who want to take the least expensive route to purchase a product or a service. Very often itâ€™s a good idea, but often the savings you realize on the front end are going to come back to haunt you on the back end. Perfect example, I have a customer who was sold long distance (switched) at .039 per minute in a .06 world. Sounds great doesn’t it? When they hired Turner to review their bills we discovered they were, in fact, being charged .039 per minute for every one minute call but they were actually charged in three minute increments. So, their incredibly great rate of .039 was actually .117 in a .06 world. The hidden billing was so deep in the invoice it was difficult to find if you didnâ€™t know what to look for. Additionally, their PICC fees that should have been maybe .32 per line kept increasing each month until it was $7.95 per line.

In their defense they were sold a bill of goods and trusted their vendor’s great pricing. Then when they checked their bill, it looked right. When we first audited their bill it ran about $12,000 a month. Once we fixed it, their bill was lowered to about $3,500 a month. So, the moral of the story,

‘SOMETIMES THE MONEY YOU SAVE IS NOT WORTH THE PAIN, AGGRAVATION AND MONEY IT COSTS YOU IN THE LONG RUN.’

Advise:

1. Don’t automatically believe an incredible rate. Make sure you have an out in your contract should you discover you are being over billed.

2. Always check their rate for all those extra fees and charges and ‘get it in writing.’ Find out if they are going to bill you extra for administration costs recovery or to recover their cost of doing business in any way! I struggle constantly with companies that are promised one rate by a sales person and then never see that wonderful rate on their bill.

3. Don’t be afraid to add (to the contract your own requirements. Remember, your strength is before they actually have your business not after. If they won’t allow it, ask them for a signed addendum by an authorized representative of the company. If they won’t give you that, there are a lot of good vendors out there that want your business, shop around.

4. Often they will show you in their contract that if you don’t like their service you can leave ‘if they don’t try to fix the problem.’ Note the wording, almost everyone will try to fix the problem. That doesn’t mean they actually will fix it or can fix it. But the word ‘try’ will keep you in that contract. Often there is a 100% penalty for early termination…so read it carefully!

5. Sometimes you’ll find out that you only have one vendor to choose from and shopping around is not an option and they won’t allow you to alter your contract, then advise them your going to record the conversation and record their promises with their name and some verifying information like a birth date.

When in doubt, have a professional look over your contract and make sure you aren’t digging yourself a pit to fall in later.

Growing Pains

Apprentice Guru — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 06:51:47 +0000

We wish to thank every one of you who have supported this site by registering to become a member, those who have posed questions, and those who have purchased our products ~ thank you.

When we first conceived the idea of this site, we received a lot of positive response. Since the airing of the Florida Cramming on Get Gephardt, KUTV, we have received criticism that our information is not free. As much as we appreciate the comments so that we can better serve our customers, we want to point out that you can get your questions answered for free. We discovered that many people do not know what a Forum is and therefore, people were confused where they could ask questions and get them answered for free. The Question~Answers (Forums) is where those free answers can be obtained.

Now please bare in mind, we are a for-profit business. Our parent company, Turner Telecommunications (Turner) has been creating savings and producing recoveries for businesses for nearly 15 years. Our products are much more comprehensive than what youâ€™re going to find in the Forum. Our products document how residential consumers can do what Turner does for themselves but on a smaller scale. In November of 2006, when Mr. Gephardt aired Turner on his show assisting him in his investigation on fraudulent charges, we had a â€œfreeâ€ five-page document for download that detailed how consumers can identify fraud, stop it, and get their money back. Although, we had thousands of hits on our website, the segment did not get Turner one customer, which we had hoped. For weeks after that segment, we helped hundreds of residential consumers for free with their phone bill. Since this last showing, on April 18, 2007, again, we have helped numerous residential consumers, for free, with their phone bill. Some people chose to complain about only finding for purchase information, which was fine because it helped us realize that they werenâ€™t able to find the â€œFreeâ€ area easier.

So my apologies go out to every visitor who felt that our site was not prepared after the April Bill Gephardt airing. We take full responsibility and we have tried to accommodate all the requests we have received to make our site easier to navigate and accessible. Again, we appreciate the continued support and please feel free to continue submitting questions and comments.

MyTelecomGuru … The Solution

Diania Turner — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 06:59:25 +0000

Hello, my name is Diania Turner. I am the founder of Turner Telecommunications, Inc.(Turner) was founded because of the outrageous cheating, lying and fraud that takes place in telecommunications. When I started Turner I thought I could save the world by making companies aware of the wrongful billing and up selling that goes on in the telecom industry. I thought I could make a difference. Unfortunately, the only companies I have been able to help are the ones that use Turner. The rest, including the consumers are like sheep going to the slaughter – sorry. Virtually everyone and every company is either being cheated on their telephone bills, up sold products and services they don’t need or just sold a snow job and buy it because they don’t know any better.

This is why â€œMyTelecomGuruâ€ has been conceived. We need to help everyone to identify telecom billing errors, be able to identify what products they need and those they don’t as well as make them aware of how to fix their billing problems themselves. Turner has great success as a consumer advocate but we are a small part of the solution compared to the giants like AT&T, Verizon, MCI, etc. With millions of customers worldwide and only one Turner, we ask, how much can we really do to make a difference? We intend MyTelecomGuru to be a larger part of the solution by calling consumers to action to help us populate the Forum with questions everyone can benefit from and receiving feedback from consumers on our â€œHow Toâ€ docs so we can continue to develop even better material.

MyTelecomGuru can make a difference. It will give all of us a way to communicate, spread the word on companies that cheat you, help others to resolve billing issues and empower the consumer with knowledge. Though MyTelecomGuru is small today, with you we can become a much larger part of
the solution.

So, ask us your questions and let us help. Often we might refer you to information that has already been set up as a download that you can purchase because it may have more complete information than we can offer in an email or in the Forum. You have our guarantee, we will address your issues by doing our best to help you resolve your problems and providing solutions to make it a level playing field for the consumer.

Together we can make a difference and get the giants to pay attention … “There is a new sheriff in town … and he’s MyTelecomGuru.com”

Empowering Consumers with MyTelecomGuru

Apprentice Guru — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 23:27:19 +0000

Salt Lake City, Utah â€“ April 13, 2007 – Turner Telecommunications, Inc. (Turner), a nationwide leader in telecommunications cost-management and training solutions located in Salt Lake City, Utah, has announced their plans to empower the consumer. Turner is making their 15 years of telecommunications experience accessible to the public via MyTelecomGuru.com. This unprecedented move brings Turnerâ€™s vast telecom knowledge directly to telecom/IT/IS professionals enabling them to make wiser decisions and do their job better.

Although in its infancy, the goal of MyTelecomGuru.com is to become the ultimate telecom resource by liberating consumers from pushy vendors, bad contracts, erroneous charges and failed excuses for bad services. For years, Turner has been unbiasedly representing businesses before their telecom providers, the Public Utilities Commission and the FCC. They have sought to lower consumer costs, seek recoveries, and champion the cause of victims of telecom fraud. â€œWe have successfully represented businesses for years but have found that fraud, errors, and bad contracts and services are a growing problem. That is why we are making our knowledge available to a larger audience,â€ says Diania Turner, President of Turner Telecommunications, Inc.

MyTelecomGuru.com will offer professionals and residential consumers a way to get answers to their telecom questions without being up-sold or packaged into something they donâ€™t need. The site will continue Turnerâ€™s mission by passing on the knowledge and experience through a Blog to open a dialog about telecom issues and how they may affect consumers; a forum where professionals and residential consumers can pose questions and receive answers from experts in the industry; a recurring newsletter to highlight common issues being discussed on the site; and for those who simply need a little guidance, â€œHow Toâ€ documents will be available providing step-by-step instructions for resolving some of the more common telecom issues. Shilo Case, CEO of MyTelecomGuru states, â€œWe expect MyTelecomGuru to meet its goal as a direct response to the questions that professional and residential consumers are seeking answers to.â€

â€œWeâ€™ve represented hundreds of companies and there has only been a handful that didnâ€™t need our services,â€ says Diania Turner. Ms. Turner went on to explain that billing errors, fraud, and bad contracts are becoming more common as competition increases between vendors. While vendors may keep their front-end costs competitive, consumers need to look out for what comes in on the back end. MyTelecomGuru.com will provide information which will empower the consumer by teaching them what to look for before getting into that bad contract, how to detect fraud on their regular monthly phone bill, and how to know what services they need to prevent wasteful spending. â€œIn essence, MyTelecomGuru is the missing link between consumers and reducing their telecommunications costs,â€ says Shilo Case.

MyTelecomGuru.com will formally launch on April 13, 2007. For more information, please visit MyTelecomGuru or Turner Telecommunications.

Turner Telecommunications, Inc., is a Utah-based company that provides cost-management solutions including cost reduction, recovery, contract negotiation, RFP development, and accounts payable and outsourcing solutions. Turner is not a telecom agent, and has successfully advocated on the behalf of some Utahâ€™s most successful companies. Their mission is to provide unbiased telecommunications solutions with honesty and integrity.

MyTelecomGuru.com, a Utah-based company will carry on the traditions of Turner Telecommunications, Inc. with the full intent of making their unique working knowledge of the telecommunications industry available to all who request.