Protect yourself and check bills carefully

Well, they’re at it again. A charge of $14.95 appeared on my sister’s recent Frontier bill for unauthorized services from My ID Safe Guard.com. As you may remember my Nov. 8, 2010, letter to the newspaper regarding a similar billing through a company named OAN. We can only assume Frontier takes no responsibility for these third-party scamming operations, but more then likely does accept payment from them for passing on erroneous charges.

I am not sure what this says about our new service company Frontier, and its integrity.

Watch your monthly billing from Frontier. Evidently, companies such as these, are unable to bill us (we, the customers) directly, so they submit their “so-called authorized billings” as third-party services through local telephone venders. If you do not contact the offending company and question the billing and ask for a cancellation with a confirmation number, you are stuck for unauthorized services and whatever balances are due.

When asked where these companies received  personal information, they indicated through an Internet website. After threatening legal action, they confirmed cancellation. To prevent such unauthorized billings, I contacted Frontier, who stated if the third-party billing looked appropriate, they would then bill the customer the third-party charges. You may request a block to your telephone number to prevent further billings from unauthorized service venders.

My advice to all: Review your monthly billings carefully as you will be responsible for unauthorized dollars if you do not cancel and confirm.

My suggestion to Frontier, perhaps you should seriously review your blind acceptance of third-party billing requests in the future.

BARBARA SHAVER

Sandpoint