I notice that a number of people are finding out about this company the hard way.
Apparently, they are similar to a service that provides communications for ATM machine owners where they bill a fee to the customer, but the owner is able to tack on their own fee as well.
The difference here is that there is no prompt, or written notice to the user of the pay phone of the fees that will be incurred as does an ATM, which gives notice and has the user acknowledge it by proceeding.
One day I had to use a pay phone with my credit card as a result of not having my cell. I had made a total of three calls which were approximately 3 to 5 seconds each attempting to reach the other party.
At no time was there a prompt of terms and conditions of the call. I figured it would be a few dollars given the costs of telecom today, but the calls were not long distance (2 miles away), so I did not expect what the consequential damage what these call attempts were going to make.
I just received a billing statement from my credit card showing each call was billed at $29.57, which was essentially $90.00 for about 10 seconds worth of use.
The billing statement showed Legacy Long Distance with reference numbers and their billing number so I gave them a call. I was prepared to talk with someone who is used to fielding inquiries such as mine so I knew to keep cool. The representative did recite to me the whole phone owner and telecom renter billing relationship; However, I was puzzled that they did not readily have a Terms and Conditions explaining how they do business with those who own the actual pay phone and who Legacy appears to base the cause (blame) of why the cost is so exhorborant.
Any specific explanation for any costs for a particular phone was considered proprietary information between the pay phone owner and Legacy. I was told I had to physically go to the phone (you read that correctly) and get the owner's information from the phone in order to actually find out owner's terms.
The Legacy representative also told me that in order to actually find out the cost at the time of the call, I had to actually ask for a live operator or to find some prompt within the connection process that would direct me to the terms and condititions. With the credit card instructions posted, there is, of course, no motivation for talking with an operator.
The Legacy representative was able to finally tell me that the pay phone owner uses a flat-fee from 1 second to 5 minutes, and then the costs go up from there.
The Legacy representative did tell me to fax my credit card billing charges to their corporate office at the following number:
(800) 700-1116
Attn: Legacy Billing Department
Within the fax I was to state the I could not find the Terms of cost of the calls and wish to receive a 50 percent or higher credit, and to include a mailing address. Apparently, this is to be relayed from Legacy's legal/billing to the owner and some kind of arbitration is performed. Sounds a little screwy.
To any of you thinking of using a payphone nowadays, beware of supply and demand.
0 comments