On October 29, I opened my Qwest bill for this month and a back page fell out of the packet which did not have Qwest on it, but rather OAN, with an email address of www.oanweb.com, and saying for questions, call 1-800-947-5084. I called that and talked to Julian, operator number 8374. He informed me I needed to call OAN at 888-343-5114.
I Called OAN and spoke with Dayner, Operator 131, at about 2:15 PM. I explained there was a collect call charge for $6.25 plus 71 cents in taxes on a phone line which only has security cameras attached to it, and unless my camera had grown a mouth and a handset, there was no way it could have answered the phone and accepted charges for this call. The call was a collect call from Lewiston, ID, 208-743-9804 to this security camera phone number. It's an IP address overlay to boot. He explained that OAN was merely a billing company collecting charges for Nationwide Collections, Inc., but that he could see I shouldn't have been charged, and that he would issue me a credit in the next month or two.in the meantime I could do one of two things. I could either pay the bill to Qwest and when the credit was issued, they'd credit it to my account, OR I could call Qwest and protest it, and deduct it from my bill.
I called Qwest to protest the amount and talked to Eric in Small Business Sales, and Eric did not have an operator number he could give me. He said he'd have to get me to another department and put me on hold, then returned and stated that the way it worked is I HAD to pay the bill or they would issue a late charge and the reason was that Qwest had already paid the bill to OAN. Hmmm. OAN said it hadn't been paid. But that when the credit came I could call Qwest and get a credit on my account.
At that time I asked whether there was something fishy about National Connections, Inc., and Eric stated that, "You do understand, I'm sure someone has told you, we do not WANT this company on our bill. We don't like this, but we are being forced to deliver their bill to you. We hate it."
I asked if there was someplace on the internet I should go to check this company out and he said I needed to contact the Washington State Attorney General. He said most people just get it worked out and don't file a complaint.
I did a search for Nationwide Connections, Inc., and funny, they didn't come up first on the list. I scrolled down and found this Rip-off site and low and behold, complaints about none other than Nationwide Connections, Inc.
I figure I'm going to do them justice. Tonight I'll call it in to the Clark Howard Show.
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