PSA: Have your phone company block 3rd party billing - beware of ESBI in particular!

One of the downsides to adopting paying over the Internet is the tendency (which I am guilty of) of not scrutinizing bills in the way one may have when they arrived in paper form and you wrote checks to send by snail mail. I recently noticed that I was getting charged $15/month for voice mail. I never check the voice mail on the land line because it is almost exclusively bullshit and anyone who needs to leave me an important message knows my cell phone number - I check that voice mail.

(Note: Before you read on, I've worked with and for companies based in India and people from India since 1982 and am very capable of distinguishing the accents (there are MANY different ones, just as in the USA) from other off-shore phone bank staff. I've had excellent experiences with most of these people and with support departments based in India and other companies - this experience was NOT one of those and this is NOT about Indians or people of any other culture - it is about 3rd party charges fucking you up. The relevance is that this off-shore phone bank is a smoke screen - as many are.)

Anyway, I called Verizon to cancel the voice mail and they told me that it was included in my "package" (quick crotch check, no voice mail) but they could disable it anyway. I had them do so. The $15/month was from some company called ESBI under the category "Miscellaneous Charges and Credits". They couldn't do anything to block it since it had already been authorized (somehow), but they could block any such things from happening in the future. I had them do so.

So, I called the number for ESBI and got some woman with a heavy Indian accent reading scripted shit at me. They're a shell company that does "billing services" for other companies. She couldn't find my account OR give me the phone number for the REAL company (United Comm Link) that was behind the charges. I asked to speak to her manager. He was no more helpful - (also Indian) same script - send a FAX to some phone number and "someone will get back to you". Black hole. He kept trying to tell me they didn't "bill me" but they are just a "billing clearing house" for hundreds of companies. What's the fucking difference? Their number is the only one on my Verizon bill!

It finally came down to me (almost shouting over him), "Put me through to YOUR manager NOW!" After 45 minutes of useless banter and another 15 minutes on hold, I got through to his manager (also Indian) and SOMEHOW, she had no problem finding my record AND the number for United Comm Link.

I called United Comm Link and in five minutes:
1) found out that the authorization was done online 13 months ago by some woman I don't know and I had no control over it - all she needed to do was enter a name, phone number, and e-mail address
2) found out that blocking 3rd party charges was the ONLY control I would have had but I didn't have it in place
3) got them to kill the service immediately and not impose further charges
4) got them to reverse the charges for the entire 13 months

SO - Call your phone company and block those fucking 3rd party charges! Anyone with a GMail account and a grudge can sign you up for damn near anything in a few minutes if you haven't taken this step.