Privasafe - OAN Services -SBC - Integretel team up to ripoff consumers via phone bills New York New York

Check your phone bill every month!

I drive a truck and am gone for weeks at a time, so I pay and receive many of my utility bills maunally online. When I checked my October SBC bill, there was a $15.40 charge ($14.95 + .45 Fed chgs) on the bottom of the bill from OAN Services for "Privasafe eMail Monthly Service Fee". I thought this is strange, since I use both my broadband provider and Yahoo! for all of my eMail.

I called SBC and they said that they placed the charges on my bill for OAN Services as a service for OAN, but they have nothing to do with the services that OAN provides. They told me they would stop any third-party billing at no charge, meaning that anyone who scams me in the future will mail me a bill with their address and phone number on it if they want to try to collect. I told SBC that I wasn't going to pay for something that I never authorized, then I sent in my payment online, less the $15.40.

Afterwards, I noticed there was another charge from INTEGRETEL for "WORLD WEB TECHNICAL SUPPORT MO FEE", also for $14.95. I had thought this was a charge that was related to the DSL service we've had for the last year, since the charge had been there for a long time. Curiosity got the better of me, so I called SBC back and asked about that charge, since it had been on my bill ever since we started DSL Service. Same story with intregetel's World wide web service. I had DSL from SBC, but had also been paying for dial-up for a whole year!

Intregetel has been sued by the FTC
(Link: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2002/11/integretel.htm )

And the sad thing is that I've been paying it for a year! I'll update this site when I get both issues resolved in order to provide others with any valuable information I receive along the way.

Bob
Visalia, California
U.S.A.