HelloCom Scam Long Distance Company Chino Hills California

Filipinos be forewarned about signing up HelloCom as your long distance provider. This company is a scam. When they target you as a potential victim they will pester you almost everyday first appealing to your being "kababayan" and when this did not work they will give you this sad story that they will lose their job. At about the sixth weekend I was just so tired of getting calls from them and decided to sign up, because after all their rates were not that bad.

You were supposed to get a letter telling you on how to activate them as your long distance carrier. Followed the instructions word for word and it did not seem to work so we thought we never activated them so we believe we were not tied to them yet. In November 2008 we received the bill for October 2008 but with $0.00 Total Due. We called them anyway that we are terminating their services. But, again we received a bill for November 2008 in December again with $0.00 Total Due. We were so busy we forgot to take any action.

Then came January 2009, we received a bill for December 2008. This time they billed us for 1-877 calls that we made on this phone. I was so busy with work at this time and I asked my wife to call HelloCom. They gave her this run around and they will not entertain her because they only want to talk to me. Scared that this will have a negative impact on our credit scores if she did not pay this bill, she decided to pay it as it was just $1.65 anyway without my knowing it.

We found out that this was a big mistake as this emboldened HelloCom to further victimize us. This month February 2009 we received the HelloCom bill for January 2009 and this time they billed us long distance fees for INCOMING calls from a relative in Massachussetts and from a friend in Illinois. We never use this phone to call out to anybody in the US because we have another phone line with unlimited long distance in the US that we can use for this purpose, or else we call them after 2100H or on the weekends using our cellphones. I called them today that we are terminating their services. I have also signed up with T-Mobile to take over as our Long Distance Service and I hope T-Mobile can rescue us from this monster called HelloCom.

By the way we never was able to and never tried again to call the Philippines using their supposedly cheap rates. We are just too scared that they would just try to grab more money from us if we did.

Hector B
Albany, Oregon
U.S.A.