| Archive for Hotshot Connect Forum Connecting Transporters and Shippers |
| Tom Cobb |
Watch your phone billsThis is an email from my cousin who lives in North Texas. This happened to them._________________________________________________________ Did you know that people can buy online services using your phone number? It's called 'phone cramming' (Google it, its a real scam) and apparently many online companies are allowed to set up services for their users simply by having a telephone number (your telephone company account #). Most of these services are for online paging, voicemail and efax services. I'd never even heard of this until I realized my phone bill was a little higher than the previous month. There was an order for new online service through a 3rd party company on my phone bill and because I had auto-pay set up on my account, the balance was paid with no question. The phone company cannot help in this situation because it is a 3rd party so I called the 3rd party's customer support and thankfully got a customer service agent. She informed me, very casually, that someone (and she gave me a name I'd never heard of) probably just used my phone number to set up their efax/voicemail service. She assured me that the amount would be credited within the next two billing cycles. I immediately disabled my auto-pay function on my home phone and cell phone bills. I don't want to take a chance of unknowingly paying for someone else's crap. Here's an example of just one company that is able to do this: http://www.rocketvoicemail.com/account.aspx Check out the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. This is disturbing! Thankfully, my account was only charged $12, but I've read online about others who have been hit up for a lot more! Keep an eye out for this kind of scam! |