Attention all fraudsters! Now you can pick names out of the phone book, bill them through their phone bill AND THEY HAVE TO PAY!.
The same charges have appeared three times on my phone bill. This last time was a problem because due to multiple mergers my local phone company is AT&T.
Some Background on PaymentOne:
Some more details, but first, some details to link these companies as being effectively the same company.
Three Names, One Business Plan:
Integretel (found to have "crammed" phone charges onto phone bill by the FTC) lists PaymentOne as its subsidiary. But there is no mention Integretel on the PaymentOne web site. But these two companies share the same street address (you have to look up the domain registration to get the business address for integretel since it is not on their site.), and have the same HR Department Fax number, and, not incidentally, they are in the exact same business.
The Billing Resource is a bit more challenging. They have an anonymous domain registration, but on weekends their automated phone mail anounces "Integretel", and they also have the same fax number as the other two companies.
Further the TheBillingResource website is a word for word template copy of integretel and are using integretel's servers (same name server ns1.integretel.com). And yes they are in the same business.
Okay. Enough private eye stuff.
Relying on the Honor of Theives:
No doubt PaymentOne's job of performing fraudulent billing on behalf of other companies is made much easier by the cozy relationship that PaymentOne/Integretel/The Billing Resource has with AT&T.
Look at the PaymentOne web site. Their VP of Telco billing solutions is a former ATT customer support executive. And they absolutely brag about their close relationship with AT&T.
So it is not surprising that AT&T consistently refuses to remove faudulent charges from the bill from The Billing Resource or Integretel. They say that you must take the charges up with (in my case) The Billing Resource.
I called multiple times and waded through their tedious voice recognition prompts to get the the billing customer service. The reps just flatly refused to remove the charge
But wait, these are the people profiting form helping theives to rip me off, so by that logic, if I get robbed, then rather than report the robbery, you just need to ask the robber to give you back your cash. Law enforcement by the honors system.
Payment Processor with NO FRAUD DEPT:
I "dicussed" my account with a young woman at Integretel/BillingResource/Nameoftheweek. I asked who to talk to about fraudulent billing. Huh? You have a fraud department. Every payment processor must have a fraud department - or it is just an open invitation to scammers.
The woman said "we don't have a fraud department." Whoa! send her back to training!
This company has no one on staff whose job is to look into fraudulent charges
Just imagine how much money a (purely hypothetical) payment processor could make by catering to the scam artist of the world. The scams are endless. But hey, that is just pure conjecture, right?
Thomas
San Francisco, California
U.S.A.