How to do something easily that gets overlooked

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3rd Party  

Do you know someone using a national telecommunications provider for your business phone services?  After reading this, they may just want to pull out that last month’s service bill and look it over closely.  

What are you looking for?  Specifically, charges that should not be present on the bill, for services they don’t remember signing up for, don’t want and didn’t need.   

How it happens:

Someone in the office receives a call with an offer for a no-cost web site, Internet yellow page listing etc.  The caller then tricks the person into agreeing to a “free trial”, “free service” or “special pricing”. The pitch was carefully crafted to quickly get an approval over the phone. The service the consumer ends up with is usually something they will never use. It could be an online listing to advertise their business nationwide when the reality is they operate a small business serving the local community.  Suddenly, there’s an extra $30.00 per month charge on their phone bill.  These charges often go undetected for months, even years. It’s an old third party billing scam called “cramming.” 

 It’s legal for a third-party company to sell advertising, web services, voice mail services etc and bill these services through the business phone bill. Many services offered are legitimate however, check the bill occasionally, as often times they’re not. 

Third Party Billers take advantage in that the local phone provider has no stake in verifying that the consumer agreed to pay for these services, so they “cram” charges on phone bills, hoping the consumer won’t notice.  As a local telephone service company and competitor, Newroads often

has the opportunity to scan customer bills of alternative service providers.  This opportunity allows Newroads to check needs and propose our own very cost effective services. Often times while scanning customer bills, we find unwarranted charges that range from $19.95 - $39.95 per month. Usually, the customer has no idea what the service is they are being charged for or, how and when these charges were ever initiated.