phone scam

[dwreath]

Well..... I thought I knew most of the scams out there or that I was smart enough to know when someone was trying to scam me.... but I missed this one.  We got slammed from our long distance company.

About three months ago someone called me telling me they were from my local telephone company (they used the name of our carrier).  They then preceeded to tell me about this new telecommunications law that says both 'long distance services' and local services must be on the same bill to simplify it for the consumer.  They stressed to me that nothing was changing with our services... but that it was a bookkeeping nightmare on their end to now convert to a combined billing service to include our 'long distance services'.  They had me believeing everything was on the up and up.  They patched me through to the third party confirmation thing (which our local company does for verfication).  It sounded exactly like what our local company would be doing.  They told me what to say and that they needed 5 of our numbers so and that they would pull up the rest then.  They gave me operator ID name and numbers and all.

Sounded like it was on the up and up.

Got the telephone bill yesterday.... Guess What... We now have a new long distance carrier.   A company called L D Services.  And 5 of our numbers were switched over to them.   It all clicked now... They kept saying 'Long Distance Services'... and me.. thinking they meant our long distance service... and they were being sneaky and meant them as a company.

I just wanted to forewarn ppl of this scam out there.  I have a contact guy at our local services and he told me that I should call him and he will deal with anything related to our account in the future.  He said in that instance I could have told them I will have our own rep deal with it.

Hope nobody else falls sucker this one.

D.

[kittie]

I'm sure that's illegal in the UK.  They misled you - we're having something similar over here where electricity and gas companies are coming in and saying "I need to read your meter, just sign here please".  You then discover that you've moved electricity companies.

They're tightening up on stuff like this over here, thank goodness.