I received our company's BellSouth bill in November and noticed it was a little higher than usual. I looked in the bill and found an extra charge of $36.70 under "Additional Charges" billed to us in the name of Local Biz USA. I looked back at other bills and found one in October for $73.40 for a total of $110.10 in unauthorized charges.
I called BellSouth who told me to call Local Biz. Local Biz said they were a web company who builds web sites for small businesses (never heard of them). Local Biz also claimed to have an audio recording of the authorization from one of our company representatives (of which I am the only one, no one else works in this office). I told them that I would hold while they located the audio tapes of the authorization. When they could not produce the tapes, I was assured that the charges would be credited on the next months bill. On my December bill, the charges were, in fact, credited. Nd of story??? I don't think so...
Nothing happened for the next two billing cycles. Then this morning when I opened our March phone bill the $110.10 had been added to our bill under the "Adjustments" heading. I immediately called Local Biz to find out why the additional charges had been filed. Their claim was that BellSouth had probably credited our account personally, as well as processing an additional credit from Local Biz. I checked all of our bills (I am a very good bookkeeper, I throw nothing away) for the entire year of 2004 all the way to the current statement and the only credit that showed was the ONE in December. I spoke to a customer service rep named Jean who then forwarded me to her supervisor April. April was less than cordial, basically accusing me of "highjacking" her and her employee's phone lines because I refused to get off the phone until the matter was resolved.
I never did get any resolution from Local Biz, but managed to persuade BellSouth to deduct the charges. I also filed reports with the Fedieral Trade Commission and FCC. The Fed Trade Commission advised me that BellSouth could apply a "Third Party Billing Block" on the account, which I immediately did. This means I can no longer use 10-10-220 or any other similar service, but I believe it will be worth it to get rid of these people.
This is just a warning to the other people who have had problems with this company... Even though you think the matter is resolved, be sure to watch those bills. They will come back to try and get their money any way they can.
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