A $9.99 charge appeard on our Alltel cell phone bill. I called to find out what it was and was told that a 3rd party company had informed them that we approved the charge. We had not.
They finally were able to give me the contact info for Predictomobile and told me I had to contact them to rectify the charge.
When I contacted Predictomobile the lady who had trouble speaking English informed me that they had a guaranteed way to prove and verify that we had signed up for the service. They said that we had entered the cell number on a www.smileymedia.com and that they had sent our phone a text message and that we had then gone to www.predictomobile and entered the pin number that was sent to our phone and they even had recorded the IP address that we had used for this access.
I informed them that we had not requested this and I wanted it stopped and I wanted a refund. She said she would stop it but could not issue a refund. She said that she would refer it to corporate for a refund. She then stated again that they don't do refunds as it was a verified charge.
After getting off the phone with them I checked the IP number she gave me and guess what, we are in Michigan and that IP tracks back to California. There is no way that we could have done that.
So I called Alltel and informed them of the bogus IP number and low and behold they were able to reverse the charge. Alltel did inform me a few times during that they ususlly don't reverse these charges. They also said that they do get lots of complaints. They must be getting lots of kickbacks from these companies because the complaints don't seem to matter. They also informed me that there is no way to block these type of charges on my account. This is just wrong.
I did get a credit but what a hassle and it took over an hour on the phone to get it settled. I can't wait to see what is charged to my Cell bill next month, maybe gas or groceries?
Predictomobile is obviously a scam, the really scary part is that the cell phone companies are helping them do this.
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