For the past couple of months we thought our phone bill was a bit higher than it should be and then noticed a charge buried on page 4 of 5 on our Verizon phone bill with the description WWWHELLCA|LMNTHLYFEE. My husband called and questioned Verizon on it and they told him that it was for our Voice Mail. But then it dawned on me that our Voice Mail was included in the service we applied for when we got our Verizon phone service. Back on the phone to Verizon (who had apparently been lying to us for months), and this time we told them that our Voice Mail was already included in our subscription service charges so why were we being charged a second time. This time they said that it was from a 3rd party billing company and that we would have to contact the number listed for them on our bill. We called ESBI this morning and were told by them that this was a service we applied for on line and had authorized and it was for downloading music. We told them that we had never subscribed to nor authorized a music downloading service and we wouldn't add it to our phone bill anyhow. They agreed to take off the charge for this month and remove the upcoming charge for next month (nice of them) but that they couldn't do anything about the previous months that we had been billed. Well upon going back over our phone bills we have been being charged this $14.95 plus tax since at least June and since we had never authorized it my feeling is that they stole our money and they should return it. This crap should not be allowed, at this rate anyone can subscribe to any service they darn well please and charge it to anyone else's phone bill they want to. From the small amount of Internet searching I have already done I see that there are tons of people with the same problem and they never authorized the charges either. Well this can't be legal and I am fileing a complaint with the FCC naming both ESBI & Verizon and will join in any class action suit that is out there to stop this fraudulent practice. Shouldn't they have to prove that they did contact you and received your authorization directly from you, not from/through another party? This is happening all over the country, to a large number of people, and the companies seem to be using various company names/phone numbers/charging various amounts. Aren't we all having enough problems with this messed up economy without someone out there trying to make a buck off of innocent people?
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