Telephone Nuisances

By now, everyone knows how to register their own telephone numbers in the National 'DoNotCall' registry ( http://www.donotcall.gov/ ) to get rid of those nagging calls in the evening and weekend from mortgage banks, phonecards etc. Note that the registry still does not save you from calls of charity organizations, but avoiding charity calls is easier than avoiding people trying to sell you interest-only mortgages or trying to extract your social security number.

But another common nuisance to do with telephone calls still exist. You may not even know it, if you do not check your phone bill with care. You may find in your telephone bill a hefty charge from nowhere for "collect calls", although your sharp memory tells you that you never accepted any such call.

What do you do? You call your local telephone company and they only ask you to contact that company (whose name may appear in you bill beside the charge for that collect call). You contact them and they say, "No way! You have to pay! Orrr ... Okay... We are giving a partial credit" .... as if they are doing you a favor.

Here is your solution: If you are unable to resolve your dispute, contact your local telephone company and ask confidently to offer you a "recourse adjustment". A recourse adjustment will remove those charges from your local telephone bill. However, the service provider company (who charged you those fictitious collect calls) may pursue collection of the charges directly from you. But hopefully they will not bother you because they know that the charge was fictitious in the first place. If they contact you - it's your turn to reject them! You may also complain to Better Business Bureau: http://www.bbb.org/.