Complaint Review: Oan Services Inc - Northridge California

I was so incensed by the widespread practice of third-party "outside providers" fraudulently billing phone company customers for YEARS and getting away with it that I went to some lengths to contact the BBB, FCC, the NY State Attorney General, and local news outlets about the problem. 

I never heard back from the news outlets. 

The BBB thanked me for filing a complaint against the three companies involved and said my "letter of experience" would be kept on file for three years, allowing the BBB to see if there is a pattern of similar complaints against the companies; if a pattern develops, this information would be included in the firm's BBB Reliability Report.  I wrote back that the pattern was well-established and that consumers had been posting complaints about such scamming/cramming practices for years. I asked what more could be done to protect the consumer and prevent such cramming activity.  She replied "we are a non-profit agency with no legal powers," and suggested I contact the FCC (888-225-5322). 

I filed a complaint with the FCC and received the following reply about a month later: "Cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill.  Crammers rely on confusing telephone bills in an attempt to trick consumers into paying for services they did not authorize or receive.  If neither the company sending you the bill nor the company that provided the service in question will remove charges from your telephone bill that you consider incorrect, you can file a complaint with...(etc)."  In other words, they know about this practice and aren't doing a blessed thing about the basic underlying problem. They didn't even inform me about the fact that to protect themselves from such fraudulent billing in the future, consumers may request that their phone companies disallow any third-party billing. I had to find that out from the phone company!  Verizon was happy to place a block on my personal account to prevent all third-party outisde providers from billing fraudulently for services I never ordered but said they were powerless to do anything else unless specifically instructed by each customer. 

Believing that surely something else could be done to protect consumers-- at the very least, a public education campaign of some sort -- I then wrote Attorney General (now Governor) Andrew Cuomo's Bureau of Consumer Frauds about the problem. I received a prompt reply from them asking me to fill out a rather lengthy form and to provide copies of all related bills, receipts, cancelled checks, or any other relevant documents.  I did so. They contacted the three companies on my behalf requesting statements of the companies' positions on the matter. ILD wrote that they "only perform bill forwarding services [for CyberTube.TV]" and had "no role in the sales process."  However, they forwarded my complaint to Cyber Tube, submitted a cancellation request for the service and installed a block to prevent future charges. The attorney for "Cyber Tube") wrote back saying a credit would be issued but provided supposed "documentation" that an online registration form for their services was submitted on such-and-such a date by my husband (correct name), at such-an-such address (our correct home address), but from an email address unknown to us.

Not satisfied with this response, I called the lawyer representing CyberTube, explained that the online request for service had used a phony email address, and said that -- as I was sure he was already aware -- Cyber Tube has been cited in MANY complaints from consumers who have been crammed in just this manner for YEARS. Plus, why would an identity thief supply a phony email address to obtain a service they'd never be able to use?? It just didn't make sense. The only entity that could possibly profit from such fraudulent use of consumer's phone numbers was Cyber Tube itself (the lawyer remained silent).

I told him that I'd thought of a simple solution that would prevent all such cramming activity in the future. Whenever I have any dealings with my local phone company regarding a change in or addition to our telephone services, I am always obliged to provide -- in addition to my 10-digit telephone number -- the additional six digits at the end of my account to verify that I am indeed the consumer in question.  If Cyber Tube's phantom "customers" were required to reply to Cyber Tube's confirmation email with this six-digit number, it seemed to me it would be almost impossible for identity thieves -- or phony telecommunications service providers for that matter -- to fraudulently bill consumers for services (unless the scammer had a copy of the consumer's phone bill statement with the full account number).  The lawyer grunted that this seemed like a good idea and said he'd pass it along to his client. However, Cyber Tube is only one of many such outside telecommunication service providers.

Finally, I wrote the Senior Consumers Fraud Representative of the NY Bureau of Consumer Frauds and Protection, cc'ing the Deputy Division Chief of the FCC's Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau, as well as the three comapnies involved, suggesting that adding this minor protection for the consumer would elminate a great deal of the widespread scamming/cramming practices currently being perpetrated on unsuspecting telephone customers across the country. I respectfully suggested that the Attorney General should take action to ensure that all third-party "bill forwarding" services and the outside telecommunications providers they represent instate such consumer protection practices.  I wrote that letter in June 2010 and never heard another word from any of them.