Verizon is my local phone provider. I am supposed to have a PIC freeze to prevent any long distance carriers from illegally jumping onto my service. For those not in the know, PIC Freeze stands for Personal Interexchange Carrier Freeze. It is a service that local companies are required by law to provide for anyone who requests it.
By having a PIC freeze no company can jump onto your service or inadvertently switch your long distance carrier or double bill you for calls that they claim to have picked up at the same time as your selected long distance provider has done without authorization either written or verbal to your local phone company.
In the event of a switch by verbal means one is generally asked some questions to verify that it is the actual customer who is authorizing any changes to the service. (i. E; last four of your social and/or partial account number etc)
Somehow this company has managed to try to charge me $41.23 tacked onto my regular phone bill of $43.04 (which is supposed to be minus any long distance and with PIC freeze in place) for a combined total of $84.27.
Ironically enough the call is listed to Sweden from my local number. This is an irony in that I have relatives in Scandinavia, but have not called Denmark (or any other Scandinavian Country aka: Sweden or Norway) for about 4 years.
This makes me wonder if the company ZPDI Opticom has actually studied past phone records from years ago when I did have long distance? And then convieniently chose a place to try to tack on a call?
Who knows? What I do know is that I am not only not going to pay it, I am going to file charges agains't them for Fraud, not only with the FCC, but also the State Attorney Generals office, and with the Federal Consumer Affairs Commission! It is an outrage that shadey fly-by-night companies like this Opticom buy time blocks from larger carriers and try to rip off the public, but it is not something that anyone has to tollerate!
When you find yourself in these situations the first link in the chain toward making corrections is with the local carrier. Make sure that they are using an active PIC Freeze system for you. Next is to send ZPDI (or any other Fraudulent provider) the bad news; (Yes Federal Criminal Charges and Investigation!
Thanks so much for the attempted Fraud, hope you like bad food, small cells, and long periods of reflection with your fellow inmates!) After that contact any and all authorities remotely able to help you. It is not a matter of overkill if you have 14 or 15 different authorities who have to play the who's-jurisdiction-is-this-case game, as long as you get strong resolution and send a loud and clear message to both the perpetrator and your local provider that We the People, shall not stand for such exploitation!
You have rights and provisions to protect you, but they will only work if you stand up and use them to stop criminals before they make you a victim! Also never under-estimate the power of the media when authorities are not as enthusiastic as they need to be in resolving such legal issues. The media are a wonderful tool for the little guy when greasing the wheels of justice and progress against crime and fraud.
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