My wife just got a collect phone call from someone whose voice she didn’t recognize, but knew her by name. This person claimed to be from a local correctional center, calling on behalf of a freind of ours who had apparantly been in jail there for much of the day after being pulled over by the cops. The freind in question (who was also named, but only by first name) has been in jail a few times, so there was some precedent to this.
She couldn’t get any concrete information, the person on the other line just seemed interested in keeping her on the phone. I called the freind in question on the other line and found him to be safe and sound at home. Later my wife called the number back (as identified on caller-ID) and discovered it was a pay phone.
So: any ideas what the hell this was? Was this some kind of a scam? Did we fall for it? Or was it likely to be mistaken identity?
When you get your next phone bill you’re going to find that you’ve been charged something outrageous like $4.95 a minute for that call, which your phone company will be collecting on behalf of the company which owned the pay phone from which the collect call was made. And if I’m remembering correctly from when this happened to me, your phone company will be totally disinterested in any protest you make to the charges, but will simply tell you to call the other company, whose customer service staff will politely inform you that since you accepted the charges you owe them the money. It’s perfectly legal, even though you were not told how much they charged before asking you to accept the charges.
There are some scams like this where the caller can trick you into dialing some combination (usually 9,0,# http://netsquirrel.com/combatkit/phone.html) and somehow get access to your long distance and then make a call and charge it to your phone bill. A lot of these seem to come from prisons. I’d imagine that it’s just people calling their relatives who couldn’t afford the long distance.
Usually, they pose as repairmen from At&T (or whoever) needing to check the line. The reason this is obviously a scam is that if you’ve ever seen a phone tech in action, rather than just calling upstairs/across the street/wherever to get something done expediently, they’d rather take the time to drive, stop off for a burger on the way, etc.
I’ve heard that the 90# scam only works on pbx systems, so a home user is safe.
This particular call your wife got might be someone who owns (or knows someone who owns) a collect call company that is just looking to rack up charges that will eventually get paid out. I imagine it’s similar to the scam from years ago where some web sites would hang up and redial to a collect number in Vanunu or somewhere and charge an exorbitant fee.
If anything, I’d be worried about how this guy called your wife. It is, however, equally likely, that you were the tenth call he made that day and his story just happened to be something you could relate to.
I have successfully contested similar charges. A friend in distress once called me collect from a payphone and I accepted the call without asking the rate. I later got billed for an outrageous amount and I contested it. The whole thing went on for several months but in the end I did not pay it. I am not saying the payphone company expressed any agreement with me, only that I did not pay, the local phone company dropped the matter and there were no consequences.
In the several similar incidents I have had my position stated to the claiming party was: “You claim I owe you X dollars. I think that is outrageous and probably illegal but I am willing to pay Y just to settle this. Otherwise I will pay when a judge says I do owe you that.” In the few times it happened they never accepted my offer and they got nothing by way of my money and they had to pay their operators for the long hours we spent arguing over the matter for several months.
I had a dispute like that with Qwest when my line was slammed. The claimed I owed them several thousand dollars in long distance calls while I claimed I owed them nothing because they had slammed my line without my authorization. For months I’d call them and offer to settle for a couple hundred bucks which was the rate I would have got from the carrier I had before they slammed me. They never accepted and so they got nothing in the end. A friend of mine suggested it might be more valuable for Qwest to show $2500 on their collectibles accounts that $250 of cash in the bank. So, it might have worked for them, it also worked for me. All you need is time and patience. You do not owe the money until a judge says you owe the money.
This reminds me of a situation we had a few years ago.
A teenage friend of ours had a problem at home so we took him in as a boarder, with his mom’s permission. He said that he had a girlfriend in Toronto, and asked if he could make a brief call to her periodically. We figured it was okay, as long as he paid for the calls.
It turns out the girl was on some kind of chat line and had been telling him she was going to move out here etc - anything to keep him on the line. Not that time mattered, because we were being charged a flat rate for each call. $50.00!!!
The kid ran up a bill of $1100.00 before we caught on. It turned out he’d done the same thing on his grandfather’s phone too. Needless to say, he left. Fortunately he was only 17 at the time and the chatline wasn’t supposed to let him on, so we didn’t have to pay a cent. Whew!
The situation presented in the OP was clearly a scam of which the payphone operator was a party to if not the main party. There is no way in the world I would pay the charges and I do not believe there is any way in the world any judge would say you are liable. I would refuse to pay and tell them to sue me. They will threaten to cut you phone off etc. They can’t and it ain’t gonna happen. Your local company is not going to cut your phone line off for this. They may keep it as a disputed charge for a few months with it showing up on your bill the next month. You then call them and over the whole thing again wasting their time and yours. After abour 3 - 4 months the local company drops any collection attempt on behalf of the claimant and they let the claimant go after you directly. Which they won’t do even in situations where they might have a valid claim, much less in this one.
Yeah, I just bitch-slapped Verizon about something similar about something.
Some firm added a $30 a month charge to my phone bill for ‘directory listing’. It’s a third party who maintains some half-assed web-based directory.
I yelled at Verizon. The told me to call the other firm.
I called the other firm. They claimed Lady Chance gave them permission. She denied it.
I called Verizon, blew off the CS Rep and asked for a supervisor. Once that person was on the line I told him I wanted to cancel my Verizon service as I was moving to a new provider. When he asked why I told him they were acting as collections for a thief.
Now suppose I get a collect call that I’m suspicious about, and rather than accept it, I insist on getting the caller’s number with the promise that I will call back immediately.
If I get a number and call it, is there any cchnace at all that I could somehow be scammed for outrageous phone charges, even though I’m using my own provider?
Add me to the list of folks who had WTF? charges appear on their phone bills. Mine was traced to a corrections facility in the midwest.
The insinuation was that someone else at my number must have authorized the calls. OK, I’ll play. Whom might that be? The parrot can’t lift the receiver, and the cats can’t get to the office or shop.
After 6 months, the charges were finally reversed.
What AndrewL didn’t mention is that I never accepted the call. Somehow, even without me accepting it, the collect call came through. The caller used the name ‘John’ (most likely 80% of all people in the US know someone named John), and our phone number is not unlisted. If you type our phone number and the state into Google, voila…there we are, address included.
Immediately after the call, I did get in contact with Verizon, and spoke with the Unlawful Call department. They said it didn’t look like I got billed for it and that sometimes, the calls just go through because of broken payphones. I backtracked the pay phone numbers, and they’re in the local county’s jail, so I called up the jail and they’re blocking calls to my number. I also had Verizon put a block on incomin collect calls. Everyone I know has a cellphone -and- calling card.
But yeah, for anyone else out there, I’m not sure exactly what the scam here is, since (aside from some annoyances) nothing seems to have happened. But if you get a collect call saying your friend (Common First Name) is in jail, don’t accept the charges, and immediately call your friend (if you have one with that name.)
*Apologies if this gets double-posted. I had trouble posting.
Before accepting any collect call ask who is calling and be satisfied it is a legitimate call from someone you are willing to talk with. Keep the conversation short, get the number to call them back. Hang up and call back.
Otherwise refuse to pay charges and hang up.
Make a record of the call in detail for future use.
Above all Do Not Give Out Any Personal/Private information to someone who may be trying to impersonate bank, business, credit card co, etc. personnel. Get their number. Call the listed number and ask for the person who called.
I agree with the above. Do not, under any circumstances, pay that bill. If you are given problems, make sure you don’t talk to CS reps. Get the supervisor on the horn if you want anything to be done for you. Whether its banks, phone companies, or airlines, I’ve always found that if you complain to the highest authority you can, you’ll always get what you want.
Once, with my long distance carrier, I screwed up because my roommate moved out, and we canceled that line and opened up a new one in my name. Unfortunately, I forgot to ask for the special international calling plan on the new line, like the old one had. So instead of getting a bill for $30 or $40 in calls to Germany, I got one for $300. I bitched for about fifteen minutes to the CS rep to no avail. She told me she could change the plan for next month, but couldn’t retroactively change my bill. I said “bullshit, I’ve had it done before.” She held her ground, so I asked her to transfer me to someone who can help me, her supervisor. Supervisor gets on the line, three minutes later, the problem is solved. I’m re-rated to $30 for the calls, everyone’s happy.
When American Airlines tried screwing me out of money for lost baggage, I wrote the Vice President of Operations. A week later, I got a personalized reply from his e-mail, $900 worth of travel vouchers, and double the $150 they owed me. Trust me, it’s worth it to bitch.
