Kokua Line

By Gregg K. Kakesako

Thursday, October 3, 1996

Phone call was example
of third-party fraud

QUESTION: When our August telephone bill arrived, we were shocked to find that we had been charged $45 for two 900 calls we didn't make. The calls were made in July in the middle of the afternoon when no one was home. They were made from Alaska and billed to our home without our permission. The long-distance carrier has a recording of the person who placed the call, a male voice we <P>didn't recognize. We did not have any house guests or visitors that day. I don't even know where you would find these type of numbers.

When we called the long-distance carrier, they told us we were responsible because they were on our phone. When we called Hawaiian Tel, it said it has removed the charges from our phone bill and sent it back to the company. We even placed a block on our phone line to prevent calls to 900 numbers. We are refusing to pay the bill. What are our rights? We don't want our credit ruined over this.

ANSWER: You may have been a victim of "third-party telephone fraud," said Calvin Tadaki, GTE Hawaiian Tel spokesman. You did the right thing by calling GTE Hawaiian Tel with your problem. Tadaki said that some mainland long-distance phone carriers don't try to verify third-party phone charges before letting the phone call go through. "Either the company doesn't want to spend the time or doesn't have the operator staff to call the third party to verify that they will pay for the phone call," Tadaki said.

Tadaki said that once you report such a billing, the charge will be taken off your phone bill and will be sent back to the long-distance carrier which put the call through.

"It is either up to them to try to collect the money from the person who originated the call or eat the cost of the call," Tadaki said. He said the charges won't appear on your phone bill again.

Tadaki recommends that phone users check their phone bills regularly to ensure that they are being billed properly for their long-distance calls, especially for calls placed from another phone or location. When such a problem occurs, Tadaki also recommends that you call the long-distance carrier that approved the third-party call and file a complaint.

He said it is GTE Hawaiian Tel's policy to call the third party to which a long-distance call will be charged to get approval before allowing the phone call to go through.

Tadaki also pointed out that placing a 700/900 block on your phone won't remedy the problem of third-party fraudulent billing because the only calls that will be blocked are those made from your phone. It will not stop any calls illegally billed to your phone from another source if no attempt is made to verify the charge before the call is allowed.

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