Imagine my surprise — my phone bill gets automatically billed to my credit card so I was completely unaware that, for over 18 months, a charge by USBI labeled as Voicenet Telephone had been appearing on my phone bill. I did some research online and found this is a fraud scheme. If you Google these two company names you will come up with a huge number of reports on their billing practices. I have been charged $15.12 a month ($287.28 in total) for services I never asked for and even to this day I don't even know what the service actually is that I have been charged for.
I found out about the charges when I called my phone company to drop call waiting from my bill. The operator pointed out a recurring charge that was being added to my fax number even though that number has had no activity in years. He researched the charge and said it had been added every month since April. He said ATT has had so much trouble from charges being added to customers' phone bills from USBI (which is a third party billing service for Voicenet Telephone), that for the first time in ATT's history, just 3 weeks ago they have started a program where they are able to block USBI being able to charge anything to a customer's phone bill. He also informed me how Voicenet Telephone obtains your information to start charging you. Here is how it happens. You get a popup on your computer. Once the popup opens it then releases a bug that obtains all of your information from your modem. The bug then cross references your phone number online to obtain all of your other information. The the company leeches themselves onto your phone bill and doesn't let go until you make them.
I called the 888 number to talk to one of their representatives to cancel the service and to try to obtain a refund. I told her the information was obtained without my knowledge. She claimed that she has an internet form that I filled out and then she asked me for my home address. I was prepared for this question as ATT told me they would reverse the charges to my phone bill but in doing so it was very likely that Voicenet would try to collect via another method, namely mailing me a bill. I had to agree with ATT that I would fight the charges if they should come directly from Voicenet myself because after removing the charges, ATT had no futher control over the company. This all was agreeable to me so ATT reversed the charges and gave me a credit on my phone bill. Hopefully the aggravation will end here and I will not have to battle again with Voicenet any further but should it come to that I will have to handle it myself, if it means getting an attorney then so be it.
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