dwtamkin@chinet.chi.il.us (David W. Tamkin) (10/07/89)
| I recently moved to a new apartment and had my phone lines installed, | and after the first month I finally got the bill. On it was a call billed | through AT&T <our LD company is MCI> reading something like this: | | ================================== | ITM Date Time Min * Place and Number Called Charge | 1 Aug16 20 ST IRAQ IQ 9641751130 40.83 | ================================== | | In fact, this is exactly how it appears on the phone bill. Not only do | I not know anyone in Iraq, but our phone service was not installed | until August 23, and not even requested until Aug 22. This smells like some game-playing by a telephone company employee. It happened to me on my old number: two calling-card charges for calls between two Chicago suburbs I hadn't been in for over two years, and I had never even had an Illinois Bell calling card issued! Sometimes people just expect you to pay the bill without reading it or to dispute the charge and let the provider eat it. The AT&T page of your phone bill should give a number to call for billing problems; they'll likely remove the charge. It wouldn't hurt to notify your local company as well so that they know why your payment is short by $40.83 plus tax. [I'm assuming that AT&T billed you through your local company.] Perhaps Patrick Townson will share the story of telco employee fraud that he told me the night of the Hinsdale fire. David Tamkin P.O Box 813 Rosemont, Illinois 60018-0813 | BIX: dattier dwtamkin@chinet.chi.il.us (312) 693-0591 (708) 518-6769 | GEnie: D.W.TAMKIN Everyone on Chinet has his or her own opinion about this.| CIS: 73720,1570 [Moderator's Note: Perhaps I will tell about the time a telco employee defrauded me of several hundred local calling units. But I suspect what the writer was discussing here was either customer fraud (there is a huge amount on calls to/from Iran, Iraq and Nigeria), or it was a charge delayed in billing somehow. I note her bill did not give a time -- just a date. It may have belonged to the person who had the number before her, and it could have been August 16, *1988* if it somehow fell out in billing and spent the last year in adjustments or a suspense account pending investigation and chargeback to the Iranian telephone administration, etc; then they charged it back to AT&T with 'corrected' information, etc. I'm sure if she calls AT&T they will write it off. I once got billed eight months after the fact on a collect call I accepted from a little rural telco. PT]