Published: April 26, 2008 11:44 pm            

DODD: Where are the good corporations?

I am absolutely convinced that there are no legitimate corporate businesses left in America. The concept of treating a customer fairly, honestly, and with respect is gone forever. Every advertisement seems to be a scam with a hidden charge or misleading premise.

My wife Kim responded to an ad last month for FreeCreditReport.Com. As the name falsely indicates, this is not a free service unless you read the multiple pages of fine print with an attorney. After seeing our “free” credit report, we received our Visa bill this month with a total of $30 in charges (one for her and one for me and I was never involved in this process). She called to inquire as to the $30 in charges for our free credit report and was told that when she accepted the free service she agreed to terms in the contract legalese to cancel an agreement within 30 days that she did not even know she had agreed to on the Web site. This was an unwanted and unrequested service that for $30 per month ($14.95 for her and $14.95 for me) would monitor and report on any activity on our free credit report.

This is the way of cable billing, telephone service billing, magazine companies, and multiple other scams being played out on a daily basis against unsuspecting consumers. Evidently, there are no consumer protections today to prevent unwarranted services from simply being added to your monthly billing that you did not request. A service or protection can routinely be added with a stipulation that if you do not wish to continue the service, you have to cancel the unrequested service within a specified time frame.

I would suspect that these phony billing scams total up collectively into the billions of dollars. I am sure Kim and I have been the victims of several hundred dollars worth in the past few years. A mobile phone company charged us a few dollars for over a year before Kim finally questioned the charge. It was not a service we used, had ever requested or knew about. When pressed, the in-store customer service agent told us that the charge was added to all new customers and if they did not request the service all they had to do was request that it be canceled at any time.

When did once respected companies desert legitimate business practices and decide that it was easier to mislead and cheat their customers to improve the bottom line? When did government regulations get erased to protect the general public from such fraudulent practices? How do we protect ourselves from such actions that are almost impossible to detect until after the fact? Even when detected and the unwanted service is deleted, rarely is there a refund for the service that is/was already in place even if you were unaware and had never known about the charge being added.

The real problem starts with the billing that is so intentionally and obviously difficult to figure out and understand. When you have a telephone service with a flat monthly charge and the bill is not the same for a six-month period (as has been the case with our ATT/Cingular bill), it is exasperating. We have been told that when the merger took place the computer systems did not line up so the billing and the collections sides of the once separate companies could not communicate with each other. Last month we were sent a bill with a credit. This month we were sent a billing notice telling us that we were going to be turned over to a collection agency for a past due amount. Kim called the Cingular billing agent and was told if the bill was not paid we would be turned over for bad credit and the telephone would be disconnected. When Kim went into the Jeffersonville store, the agent told her this is a common problem solely to this region due to overlapping area codes and whatever she did, do not pay that bill. Remember, both of the parties that advised us within a 24-hour period work for the same company.

We will not know whether the problem is solved or whether our “past due” amount on the bill that was already overpaid will be turned over to a collection agency which will adversely affect our good credit rating. Hopefully, if that happens FreeCreditReport.Com will let us know. That $30 service which we didn’t request has been prepaid and is in effect until sometime in May.

Lindon Dodd is an Otisco resident who is a freelance writer, 4-H School Enrichment Program Assistant and Realtor who can be reached at lindon.dodd@hotmail.com.

        

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