I answered a call from a woman who identified herself as a representative of AT&T. She indicated that a letter had recently be sent out to all AT&T customers advising them that AT&T had changed their long distance provider to NALD (she did not use the full name of the company or I could have been looking them up on the Internet.) At first she made it sound like I was authorizing a re-sending of the letter. Then, it turned out I was making a verbal authoization to change our long distance. I went through with the verbal authorization with only a little suspicion in my mind, assured that the change would be put on hold until they had my signature.
I was transferred to another person who recorded my responses. At that time I finally understood that I was authorizing a change. I completed the call, but as soon as I got off the phone I called the AT&T number on my phone bill to get a confirmation. Of course, I had been lied to. The woman had misrepresented herself. She did not work for AT&T, AT&T was not making changes, and no letter had been sent.
I had faced switching problems at another company before, so I had thought I had been careful to request a "Pick Freeze" when we switched to AT&T, but it turned out that they had only put a block on our lines (to prohibit other companies from adding additional fees to our lines.)
The CSR was able to put a "Pick Freeze" (requires written confirmation to change carriers) on our lines immediately to ward off the changes. I made cetain she did it on all of our lines.
I hope this works to ward off the rip-off from National Access Long Distance. Even if it were true that they did offer less expensive service I would not want to use them because of their deceptive practices.
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