Dial *6 for Private Calls

Take a look at the sticker they've just attached to my extension at work...

"For private calls, dial *6"

There is an automated billing system at the phone system installed at the company I work for. To make private calls, you first dial *6 and then the number you want to call. If you are going to make a business call, dial *9 and then the number you want to call. At the end of the month, all your private calls are deducted directly from your paycheck. I think it is a fair rule. I normally use my personal mobile phone for private calls so I don't think too much to make a call, I normally just dial *9, because they are all business-related calls.

But then they put this sticker on the phone. That small piece of paper pisses me off and is now part of my daily life... This is one clear example of how to tell the difference between "Information" and "Intimidation". I would be PERFECTLY okay if the sticker said "Dial *6 for private calls; Dial *9 for business calls". That would be an informative sticker. But it doesn't.

Shouldn't the automatic payment be AUTOMATIC?

Okay. Two things that made me angry TODAY and AT THE SAME TIME!

Here in the US they also have the automatic debt payment. You can put your utilities, internet and cable TV provider, telephone (including mobiles), credit cards bills and even your rental to be paid automatically via checking account (or even via credit card sometimes).

• AT&T Wireless Prepaid Cell Phone Automatic-refill

When I was in Brazil, I had a prepaid cell phone and sometimes I forgot to put credits on it and my wife always complained about that because she was unable to reach me. Fair enough.

Here in the US I have a prepaid cell phone and AT&T provides the Automatic-Refill service. You can choose some options at the Automatic-Refill service like "once in a week", "twice in a week", "once in a month", "twice in a month" and "when you run out of minutes". And then you can choose how much credit you want varying from US$15.00 to US$100.00 (note: US$15.00 expires in 30 days and US$20.00 expires in 90 days).

As I am scarcely using the cell phone (less than US$75.00 in 6 months, i.e. less than US$13.00/month!!!), I thought that it would be nice to have added US$20.00 whenever I run out of minutes and so I subscribed to it.

Then today my credits ran down to US$0.14 and with such credit I can't place nor receive any call. Fair enough. However the US$0.14 can be used DURING a conversation, so for AT&T I still have minutes to talk and because of that they didn't refilled my credits automatically! This is a CATCH 22 because I am not able to place or receive ANY call with US$0.14!!

After realizing that, I just canceled my subscription to that service and refilled the credits by myself.

• RCN (Internet and Cable TV provider) Automatic Bill Payment

Because of this issue, I went online to check the NSTAR utility and RCN bills. NSTAR was fine, being debted accordingly. When I was checking RCN, I have realized that they were billing me more than twice the usual. And it comes that the automatic payment didn't happen last month!!! You see, there was one previous automatic payment for April and it was done correctly. But the automatic payment for May just didn't happen!!!

Now I have sent an e-mail to the Customer Services in order to check what happened and probably I shall make the payment manually every month in order to be sure that such thing doesn't happen again.

For goodness sake, this is not a Third-World country!!! Things should be easier here in the US...

Those things really make me angry...

They forward your credit card data to a scammer

Scammers really makes me angry. OK, maybe scams are not a 'little thing', but they deserve to be mentioned once they really make me angry.

When I checked my credit card transactions history some days ago I noticed a strange US$12.00 (twelve dollars) debt related to some "Complete Savings" company.

While researching through the Web, I discovered that such amount was charged by this "Complete Savings" website. I remember to have subscribed myself to that site after having acquired something via Internet at some web store. At the end of the transaction you were ALLOWED to subscribe to such website in order to receive some small discount coupons. Since the "Customer Savings" stuff was linked directly to the 'reliable' web store so I thought it was OK to register my e-mail to receive some information about discounts and also to collect points somewhere to exchange for some discount coupons.

Until then, the site didn't mention any fees once it was related to some purchase at 'reliable' store. That is the catch. It IS NOT FREE!!! All the charge information is written in the almost-infinite-with-small-letters TOS (Term of Service).

The problem is that I DIDN'T PROVIDE my credit card number to "Complete Savings" website! This means that someone DID FORWARD those info to them.

There are many complaints regarding this issue at this site, and it seems that this scam cannot be controlled by the 'reliable' web sites once the page is generated automatically.

This really makes me angry...