Monday, July 31, 2006

Blatent Phone Rip Off!

I think I'm being charged for not accepting a collect call. WTF??!

I just checked my phone bill to be sure there were no long-distance charges since one of my daughters had talked to someone in another state. I wanted to make sure the charges were not on my bill. They weren't. But what was there was a charge for $1.02 from Zero Plus Dialing, Inc.

I did a google search (and a google blog search) for Zero Plus Dialing, Inc. BOING! People are complaining all over the place about this rip-off company. Here's only one site with several complaints listed.

Apparently if you use ANY phone other than a residential one and you call collect you will receive a horrendous charge for it. An outrageous charge! It happens on pay phones, hospital room phones, hotel room phones, prison phones.... all of them. Again, can you say WTF!!?

But back to my piddly little charge. The only thing I can think of is I got a call from the state prison (I think... anyway, some kind of jail or prison and they use pay phones) and when asked if I would accept the call I pushed the button to decline. I didn't know anyone who was in jail so I am assuming the inmate dialed the number wrong.

Based on what I read on the web, it can take hours and hours on hold trying to get to someone who knows what they are doing at Zero Plus... and there seems to be some question if you will ever reach any human at all.

I'm just fuming. No wonder people go postal. I believe we are in the process of a complete and total collapse of the world's economic system and it is directly related to blatant greed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you may be right, but if so you got away with it cheaper than if you HAD accepted the call (saying you knew someone who was in prison) I don't remember the name, but once my son was in the hospital and could only use a pay phone, and didn't realize it was whatever company it is that rips people off. He called me several times and didn't talk more than a few mins and the calls were like $20-40 each. 3 short calls came to $80 on the phone bill. I called the phone co of course and they said it was a private pay phone co and there wasn't anything they could do. There was no law that said the rates (like $12 a min?)had to be posted on the pay phone. My son was in a hospital because of being bipolar and off his meds, so it wasn't even like he could think all that clearly and and who would have thought about that anyway?
Maybe some things we just have to say "fukk it" and live and learn. I occasionally find this out when I get ripped off in some way by an ebay seller. Not a lot, and since I don't have a car so can't just run out to a store, buying things online like that is a help.