Well, that was really stupid of me…

This has been a bad week for my self-esteem for more than one reason, not all of which I can talk about in public. But I’m going to humble myself (which isn’t hard to do, at the moment) and share this story, by way of a public service announcement to others. Of course, I’m not assuming that anyone else will be as dumb as I was!

I pay almost all my bills online, and I monitor my bank and credit card accounts online, and for many of them I have “paperless billing.” So, I got an email in the wee hours of Thursday morning from Verizon, alerting me that my bill had been posted and I could pay it. But the amount seemed much higher than usual. I have a bundle with “unlimited calling” features, and the amount shouldn’t change unless I’ve made an international call or something, which I knew I hadn’t.

I checked, and on my bill was a Mystery Charge: $53.07 from a company called ILD Teleservices, and no other information at all. I looked them up, and found that they’re a third-party billing service with a somewhat shady reputation–there have been a lot of complaints about them. Their website was really friendly, though, and included up-front information about how to dispute a charge. However, it said that charges should say on whose behalf ILD is billing, and my Verizon bill did not. I didn’t have a clue. I did, however, have an unpleasant suspicion. I couldn’t call ILD or Verizon until business hours.

The next day, I got up and got on the phone. ILD was cheery and helpful and said that the charge was for a company called Search Local, Inc in Wayne, New Jersey–and it was a monthly charge. $49.95 plus tax a month for…well, for some kind of search engine business listing. I said–I was nice, but firm–that I had never, ever authorized such a thing, that I would never knowingly authorize any third-party charges to my phone bill, under any circumstances whatsoever. The ILD rep assured me that she would cancel all further charges and gave me a phone number to talk to Search Local, Inc. about getting a “refund.” She also advised me to have Verizon block third-party charges to my phone line.

I tried the number purportedly for Search Local, Inc….and as far as I could tell (because no business name was mentioned when the call was answered) it connected to ILD Teleservices’ voice mail. The voice mail said something about, “if you want to cancel your account, have your account number that was in the welcome letter you received…” I never received any “welcome letter,” by email or on paper. So, I had no documentation of any kind for my “account,” for which I was being billed $50 per month, nor for what kinds of obligations might be attached to it (like, say, a hefty “early termination fee” for cancelling). The call to Search Local Inc.’s number left me on hold for a couple of minutes and then disconnected.

I called Verizon. Verizon said they would cancel the charge, and I should just pay the bill with that amount subtracted. They also put a block on my number to prevent any such third-party billing in the future. Interestingly, the rep told me that “for legal reasons,” they couldn’t offer this service to a customer until the customer had a problem and requested it. The Verizon rep also advised me to report Search Local, Inc. to the Better Business Bureau and Attorney General’s Office. “If you don’t report it, they’ll just keep on doing this to other people,” she said earnestly. True enough.

You see, I’d figured out what happened. On September 2–here’s one benefit of keeping a really detailed daily journal, because I’d made a note of this–I got a call from a man who talked very fast and almost unintelligibly, I couldn’t understand much of what he said, but it was something about an online business listing, something-online-something-biz, and he “just wanted to confirm my information.”

Now, I didn’t fall off the turnip truck yesterday. Right there, when he wanted to “confirm my information,” there should have been red flags and klaxons and my Spidey sense going into migraine mode and the robot waving its arms and the whole thing. But it didn’t. I have no excuse: it was the fifth day of that last intense heat wave we had, I’d just gotten up, I was trying to get breakfast and things done, I was all focused on getting the sign from the church and getting to Dad’s for the game that afternoon, I was getting tons of campaign-related “survey” calls at the time, and I’d gotten calls similar to this before…those are all reasons, not excuses. I should have twigged to this con-man and I was played for a sucker. I was “slammed” and I fell for it. I know I didn’t hear anything about a fee, let alone a monthly one, and I didn’t think I could be ripped off when they didn’t have any credit card information. I didn’t realize that all they needed was my phone number and a way of tricking me into saying, however indirectly, “yes.”

Now I know!

I looked up more information about Search Local, Inc. They’ve been around for about a year. The New Jersey Better Business Bureau gives them a “C,” nine complaints, one unresolved. They don’t come up in a Google search. Their domain name, searchlocalonline.biz, is registered with GoDaddy and not hidden, the information comes right up on BetterWhois. But there’s no website associated with the domain name. The contact phone number connects to ILD Teleservices. They have an office address, who knows if that’s legit.

So, I reported them to both the Better Business Bureau and the state Attorney General’s Office. I just want that on file in case there are more shoes to drop (Verizon didn’t think that was likely, but I’m not relaxing about all this for a while yet).

So, that sucked down a lot of wasted time and caused me stress (and some humiliation) that I didn’t need. On top of that, last night I found a Mystery Charge on BLUM’s bank card–from Fedex. The charge listed a tracking number and Fedex’s phone number, but I had to wait until business hours today to call them. I tried looking up the tracking number online and it wouldn’t show the names or address of either sender or recipient, just the shipment’s routing, from Waukegan, IL to Herndon, VA. I thought it might be something related to book returns from a wholesaler, but I hadn’t gotten any books back, and the shipment had been made on September 14. Anyway, when I called Fedex today, they looked up the sender and recipient, and neither one was anybody I’d ever heard of or had anything to do with me, books or publishing. It looks like someone charged a shipment to my Fedex account–and I’ll be generous and assume it was a mistake. It wasn’t a large amount. Fedex said they’d reverse the charge and charge back to the shipper, but I’m not sure if my account will get a refund or what, so I’m watching that now and I may have to call Fedex again. *sigh*

It’s been a frustrating couple of days. 🙁 But thank the gods for online banking and bill-pay! I check all my accounts several times a week and I’m so glad I can!