Underhanded Phone Phucks and Charging Non-Customers for Services they Didn't Order and Don't Want
I'm sure lots of people who blog have written about the scumbags who work long distance phone systems. But I haven't yet (at least not recently) and I've got a pretty decent rant building about US Telecom, a company that makes its money by an illegal process called cramming. Cramming is the act of tacking on another, generally small and likely to be overlooked, charge on your regular phone service.
Here's the basic set up.
I got a call from yet another asshole telemarketer selling long distance at an impressively low rate of five cents a minute. I asked the wanker at least five times that there were no other charges, ever, for the service. I was assured each time that no, there were no hidden charges anywhere at any time. So I broke one of my cardinal rules of never buying anything from telemarketers and signed up.

And things worked just fine until January when they decided to start charging me a network access fee that I didn't notice until Paula was going over my bills as we were getting ready to move. I figured that it didn't make any sense to dispute at that point because I was being removed from the phone bill entirely, my service cancelled and Paula's initiated.

Well, the thieves running US Telecom (or USBI as they're listed on the bill) decided that, because I didn't call them to cancel the service, that they could continue to bill Paula and no one would be the wiser. Bear in mind that I'm no longer associated with the phone service, I have no connection to it at all. The US Telecom crooks began to bill Paula for their long distance service irregardless of the fact that a) she'd taken PacBell's long distance service and b) she has not been and will never be a customer of US Telecom. They just presumed that it was okay to charge her for a service she'd never requested.

And then had the audacity to tell her that she was responsible for these charges because I hadn't had them removed when my phone was cancelled. Neverminding the fact that it was my account and my long distance and not hers.

And this morning I was able to get not just the regular phone answerer all pissed off and shouting at me (nice customer service!) but her supervisor started yelling at me as well. This is a company that hides its charges on phone bills and then makes it all but impossible to get them removed. So we called SBC and sicced them on US Telecom. Things should be sorted out by the end of the day and all I can say is that I would never ever consider doing business with a scummy bottom feeder company like US Telecom again and woe be unto the next telemarketer who happens to call me.