Complaint / Review
Sharenet Communications - National Brands
Ripoff AT&T local call charge for exorbitant and unusual long distance

My wife had to call home from a local Kaiser Hospital less than a mile away and in the same Central Office number block. The hospital walls are adorned with "No cell phone calls" but there are SBC/AT&T public phones everywhere.

We frequently use the convenience of the phone company calling card and she had no reason to believe anything underhand would happen. The phones were not different or labelled differently from any other public phones that she has used.

After dialing the house number and the security code, she heard the normal "Thank you for using AT&T". The call lasted less than 3 minutes.

The subsequent AT&T phone bill included a Long Distance fee "Billed on Behalf of SHARENET COMM. - Calling card call, 5 minutes $16.59."

I don't know what kind of deal Sharenet has with Kaiser Permanente but there is a serious difference between normal $1.25 calling card charge and $16.59 I was billed for an under three minute call "across the street". What a rip-off.