{"id":36,"date":"2004-10-13T14:39:35","date_gmt":"2004-10-13T18:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stein.everybody.org\/journal\/i-got-scammed\/"},"modified":"2004-10-13T14:39:35","modified_gmt":"2004-10-13T18:39:35","slug":"i-got-scammed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/i-got-scammed\/","title":{"rendered":"I Got Scammed"},"content":{"rendered":"<table border=\"1\" cellpadding=\"5\" style=\"background-color: #ffffcc\">\n<tr>\n<td>I&#8217;m getting a lot of visitors who were scammed by ChampKicks.com.  If you&#8217;re one of them, I suggest you check out these links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ftc.gov\/bcp\/conline\/pubs\/credit\/billed.htm\">The FTC&#8217;s article on what to do if you were billed for merchandice you never received<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.scambusters.org\/Scambusters21.html\">ScamBusters&#8217; article: What To Do If You Get Scammed<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Good luck.  Let me know if you were successful.<\/p>\n<p>And now, back to our regularly scheduled rant&#8230;\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p>On Thursday, July 22nd, I received a call from a telemarketer representing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.choiceonecom.com\/\">Choice One<\/a>.    She identified herself as &#8220;Roma&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I used to be on the New York State <a href=\"http:\/\/www.consumer.state.ny.us\/dnc_index.htm\">&#8220;Do Not Call&#8221; registry<\/a>.  But a couple of years ago, I submitted a written request to have my number removed from the list after reading a Discipleship Journal article that described how someone decided to use telemarketer calls as an opportunity for evangelism.  Now, when a telemarker calls, I ask &#8220;is this a solicitation?&#8221;  When they say, &#8220;yes&#8221;, I respond &#8220;I&#8217;ll give you a few minutes of my time if, when you&#8217;re finished, you will give me a few minutes of your time.&#8221;  After their pitch is over, I ask them about their eternal future and explain the gospel.<\/p>\n<p>Since I want them to listen to my explanation of the good news, I generally feel like I ought to give full consideration to whatever they are selling.  Thus, I listened to Roma&#8217;s pitch for Choice One&#8217;s local telephone service plan.<\/p>\n<p>Roma offered unlimited local calling, 200 minutes of long distance, and all the features (caller ID, voicemail, etc.) they had for $34.95\/month.  We have dial-up internet access, and I thought it might be nice to avoid the busy signals people get when they call us and we&#8217;re online or otherwise on the phone.  I pointed out that my bill would actually be considerably larger than $34.95\/month since there are all the taxes, fees, and surcharges, like the FCC&#8217;s customer access line charge.  Roma assured me that the $34.95\/month includes the customer access line charge and that my total bill with taxes would be about &#8220;$38 or $39&#8221; per month.  I was very surprised and asked her to confirm that the FCC charge was included.  She did.  Furthermore, Roma told me that if I was not satisfied, Choice One would pay to switch me back.  I asked her to confirm that Roma mean that Choice One would pay any fees charged by Frontier for me to switch back.  She did.<\/p>\n<p>I told Roma that I make it a practice to never sign up for something on the spot.  I would be happy to consider the offer and get back to her.  She tried to make a hard-sell and asked my objections.  I said I wanted time to look over all the details.  She faxed the information to me and arranged to call back the next day.<\/p>\n<p>After she was finished, I asked her about her eternal destination and learned that she was hoping to get to heaven because she was a good person.  I pointed out some Bible verses that contradicted her assumptions and discussed it for a while.  I encouraged her to consider these things as we finished our call.<\/p>\n<p>After I reviewed the information she had faxed, I called Frontier (the local telephone company) and asked if they had any comparable plans.  They said that they had a similar plan for $35\/month, but it does not include the customer access line charge.<\/p>\n<p>When Roma called back the next day, I noted that the information she had sent did not say that the customer access line charge was included in the price.  Roma assured me that it was.  I agreed to sign up for the plan.  (After I signed up, I followed up on the gospel.  She asked me if I was a priest or something.  I was able to explain why I, a normal [well, mostly normal] person would be so concerned about spiritual matters.)<\/p>\n<p>It took several weeks for Choice One to take over my telephone.  During that time, I found <a href=\"http:\/\/www.buzme.com\/buzme\/service\/free.asp\">free internet call waiting service<\/a>.  However, after the switch to Choice One, I learned that Choice One does not offer fixed busy call forwarding, required for internet call waiting.  I was disappointed.  I called Frontier and learned that not only do they offer this service, but they had a plan with all the calling features for $30\/month.  I don&#8217;t know why they didn&#8217;t mention it when I had called them before.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to switch back.  That&#8217;s when I learned that the statements that &#8220;we&#8217;ll switch you back for free&#8221; were false.  Choice One was perfectly willing to disconnect me, but they said that they couldn&#8217;t switch me back; Frontier had to do that.  Frontier was happy to sign me back up, but they charged $33 for their effort.  They were not willing to waive that fee.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks later, I received my Choice One bill.  The FCC customer access line charged was listed as a separate item in addition to the $34.95 montly charge.  I called customer service and reminded them of their pitch.  They said that they didn&#8217;t know anything about the telemarketing company that had misrepresented the cost of the service.  They couldn&#8217;t tell me which telemarketing company had signed me up.  I asked if they could tell who received the commission on the sale; they claimed they could not.  They did not honor the promise made by this third party.<\/p>\n<p>I know the dates I received the calls (July 22 and 23) and the person who made the promises (Roma), but I don&#8217;t have anything in writing and I have no way to trace the company who called me.  I thought I was being careful by having Roma carefully confirm each item at issue.  I think that <em>did<\/em> prevent miscommunication, but it didn&#8217;t prevent fraud.<\/p>\n<p>Lessons learned:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Telemarketers have no stake in the sale.  They can say anything to get the commission and run.<\/li>\n<li>Get it in writing.  A verbal assurance in addition to what&#8217;s in writing is worthless.<\/li>\n<li>Before signing up with the solicitor, call the actual company to confirm<\/li>\n<li>Find out who&#8217;s really calling you.  Get the name of the telemarketing company.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Cost of lessons:  $33 reconnection fee + $4 unexpected FCC fee.  Not too bad a price, if it keeps me from making the same mistakes again.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I wonder if my wife will let me install a recording device on our home phone&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How a telemarketer deceived me and got away with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-citizen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeremystein.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}