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Are Criminals Adding Their Long Distance Charges to Your Phone Bill?
Are You Paying Double?
Are Criminals Adding Their Long Distance Charges to Your Phone Bill?
How To Not Be A Victim of the Latest Phone Scam - "Tolling"
First it was slamming. Then it was cramming. Now it's "tolling". Just when you thought it was safe to make a phone call again, the phone crooks out there in "phoneland" have come up with a brand new way to steal from you with their latest phone scam. If you're the one in charge of reviewing your company's phone bill each month - here's what you need to know to prevent from losing thousands of dollars in just a few minutes.
The official phone company term for this new type of fraud is "social Engineering". The One Plus Agent Association or OPAA (a telecom industry association of independent telecom agent-consultants) has coined the catchy word "tolling" to teach the businesses they work with about the danger and high cost of this new type of fraud. The word "tolling" is a variation of the acronym TOL that stands for "Transfer to an Outside Line". A receptionist inadvertently transferring an unknown caller to an outside line is the primary way this new type of fraud occurs.
SBC, the parent company of Pacific Bell states that, "Social Engineering is the theft of telephone service, perpetrated by a caller, for the purpose of completing a call with no intention to pay for the call. Social engineering normally occurs when a caller wishing to perpetrate such a fraud clandestinely convinces a receptionist, PBX operator or ordinary Centrex user at a business to transfer him or her to a long distance operator. Once connected, the phone crook or "toller" asks the long distance operator to connect a long distance call (usually to an international destination.) The toller knows that the charge for the call will appear on the line being called from (which appears to the long distance operator as a line at the innocent business.)
If you think this can't happen to your business just ask around at your next business mixer. Informal surveys suggest 20% of businesses have been tolling victims in the last three months. The average loss is in just one day.
Tolling Methods
Tolling fraudsters will say anything that works but will generally represent themselves as an employee of the local phone company who is doing emergency repair phone work for the innocent business in the office building basement or at a "phone box" a block or so away. They generally tell the unsuspecting receptionist that they "need her help doing a test" to clear up the problem. "Yeah, this is Bill with Pac Bell down in the phone room. We've just about got the phone problem fixed that your president was screaming about. To complete the fix though I'll need your help with a couple short phone tests. Could you please hit 'transfer, nine - zero - zero' on your console there and hang-up?"
SBC suggests the tolling perpetrators may also say they want to measure the connectivity levels on the phone line and if they can't test the call through, it could lead to serious dial tone service interruptions. Phone company service technicians would never have a reason to do this. Other tolling methods include:
· A caller could request to be transferred to extension "900" or "800." (9 or 8 initiates the call setup to get an outside dial tone from a customer's PBX and 00 is the dial pattern that gets them to the long distance operator.)
· The "technician" may request that the receptionist transfer them to the "test number 910-102-880." (9 initiates the outside dial tone and 10-10288-0 is the access code for the AT&T operator. Any one of several hundred other operator access codes could also be substituted in like 10-10-9000 for MCI/Telecom USA.)
· Tollers will call into a large business from the outside and ask the receptionist for an internal extension, say then to the extension owner they've "reached the wrong extension" and then ask to be transferred back to the receptionist. When this call is received back by the receptionist, the call appears to be an in-house call or transfer. The toller will then ask for an outside line or ask to be transferred out while posing as an employee of the firm.
Tolling Targets
Any business that has a PBX, hybrid key telephone system or Centrex lines could be targeted for tolling. As well, businesses having multiple employees that the operator or receptionist wouldn't know by name or voice are often targeted. Specific recent targets include but are by no means limited to:
- Hospitals
- Car Dealerships
- Armed Forces
- TV and Radio Stations
- Law Enforcement Agencies
- Schools
- Law Firms
- Government Offices
Since even the smallest businesses have installed Centrex lines to avoid buying phone systems, even the smallest companies are susceptible to this crime.
Tolling Tip-Offs
The main tip-off is getting a "repair call" from anyone representing themselves as calling from any sort of telephone company and/or anyone requesting any sort of transfer. Others include:
· Multiple requests for transfers to extensions 900 or 800.
· Background noise as an indicator that the call is originating from outside the business (e.g. cars, trucks or other street noises suggesting that the call may be coming from a pay phone.)
· Requests for outside lines or transfers after hours or on weekends when most supervisory personnel are gone for the day.
Recommendations
SBC states, "The best policy is to advise customers not to transfer anyone, ever, to an outside line. If a company decides to allow call transfers however, consider the following:
Implement a structured telephone transfer policy with regularly scheduled training for all employees yearly and all new employees immediately.
Do not dispose of information with employee names or titles in public dumpsters. Tollers can retrieve such information and successfully use it to pose as the employees to unsuspecting new company operators or receptionists.
Use "callbacks" to confirm the identity of any caller requesting a transfer. If a person posing as a technician requests an outside line for any reason, ask for his or her supervisor's name, the supervisor's telephone number and the technician's callback number to verify legitimacy.
Develop a password system to approve legitimate transfer requests. Have the password change every 30 days or so and request that password users not write the passwords down anywhere.
Use alternative to employees calling in and requesting transfers. Issue calling cards to employees who travel. Calling cards are a great way to monitor authorized usage while preventing tolling.
As the person in your office responsible for reviewing the monthly phone bills for legitimacy, you'll need to be on the watch for any unusual "operator assisted" calls. Three-hour calls to obscure little countries you didn't know existed are usually your first tip-off. Unfortunately, finding tolling this way means you may have already been hit for several thousands of dollars.
Who's out there to help you before or after this crime has been perpetrated against your business? Calls to your local phone company, long distance phone company and the folks who work on your phone are a good start. The victimized business is ultimately and solely responsible for footing the bill on this crime however.
Another person who can help is an independent telecommunications contractor or agent. Like stockbrokers or real estate agents, telecom agents offer complimentary consulting in exchange for commissions received. More often than not, your local telecom agent has had recent experience getting a long distance company to forgive these tolling charges in exchange for documented assurances that the company has "protected itself" against repeated tolling attacks. To find a telecom agent or consultant in your area, consult your local yellow pages.
Are You Paying Double?
NOS and ANI long distance customers need to question the "fine print".
There’s an old business saying that states, "The importance of a printed word is inversely proportionate to its size". This goes double for the fine print associated with the long distance companies NOS and ANI. If you have or are considering NOS or ANI for your long distance service, please carefully read the following information as it may save you quite a bit of money.
Many small and medium sized companies are being introduced to NOS and ANI through a telemarketing call. The NOS or ANI telemarketer suggests that a business owner could save money by switching to NOS/ ANI’s low per minute rates of 7.9 cents. If a business owner is currently paying more than 7.9 cents per minute for long distance then switching to NOS/ANI sounds like a pretty good cost-cutting move. Because they fail to heed the "fine print" however, many business owners see their long distance costs go up after switching to NOS/ANI. The reason NOS/ANI will raise your bill even with "lower per minute rates" is that ANI doesn’t bill by the minute but the "TCU".
What they do is quite legal and is actually spelled out in the "fine print" on the bottom of the rate sheets and promotional material NOS/ANI sends out. The key phrase in their legalese is "Non-transport / non-usage charges apply per carrier’s tariff". Attached to this document is a copy of the actual 2-page tariff summary NOS/ANI sends out with their customer’s first invoice.
If you look on their tariff summary at their own example of how they charge for a nine-minute call, it all becomes quite clear why a businesses long distance phone bill will go up in spite of NOS/ANI charging a lower per minute rate. The tariff summary example uses a price of 14.9 cents a minute.
If one assumes they’re just being charged by the minute alone, one might expect to pay $1.34 for a 9-minute call (9 minutes times 14.9 cents per minute equals $1.34). In their own example though they quite clearly show that a nine minute call converts to 18.5 TCU’s and so the call is priced at $2.76 (18.5 TCU’s times 14.9 cents equals $2.76). Of the $2.76, only $1.34 is for the actual 9-minutes of long distance, which is why they correctly state you’re only paying 14.9 cents per minute in the example. So what’s the other $1.42 for? The "non-transport / non-usage charges (that) apply per carrier’s tariff" as noted in NOS/ANI’s fine print.
Since most other carriers just charge by the minute, one must convert NOS/ANI’s price per minute to an overall "cost per minute" or TCU which includes the per minute cost and the non-usage charges NOS/ ANI charges. NOS/ANI provides the actual formula in the attached tariff summary. If you were a whiz at mathematical word problems in school you’ll be able to use their formula right away. Otherwise use the simple rule of thumb that follows. For most business customers that make normal 3-minute calls, the simplest way to convert NOS/ANI’s price per minute to an overall cost per minute or TCU is to take their price per minute and double it. This rule of thumb is clearly shown through their own example from above. When ANI charges $2.76 for a 9-minute call, the overall cost is 30.6 cents which is more than double the advertised "per minute" rate of 14.9 cents. As a new NOS/ANI customer, you would actually see an initial decline in your bill. This is because NOS/ ANI’s non-usage charges don’t usually kick in until the third month per NOS/ANI’s fine print, "standard tariffs on file with the FCC apply to all calls after the first two invoices."
It’s during the third and fourth month of being a new NOS/ANI customer that you would likely see that the TCU’s you’re being charged for seem to be double what your average monthly minutes were before you switched to NOS/ANI. When this "doubling" happened recently to new NOS/ ANI customer we know, we called NOS/ANI on their behalf for relief. We stated, "No where in the NOS/ ANI promotional information does it suggest that the ‘non-usage’ charges will be equal to or greater than the actual per minute charges!" We discovered that’s when the other part of NOS/ANI’s fine print kicks in -" Modifications to tariff provisions are not authorized and will not be accepted." Becoming a NOS/ANI customer is easy. Leaving NOS/ANI without paying for all your TCU’s first is hard. (Their "Satisfaction Guarantee to transfer you back to your previous carrier" at their expense only covers the five dollar per line charge the local phone company charges to switch your long distance service to another carrier.)
To confirm this information is correct, ask the NOS/ ANI representative to plainly explain to you how the "non-usage" charges are calculated. Ask them if the non-usage charges might tend to "double" the price per minute quoted after two months. Then fax the representative the actual NOS/ANI tariff summary attached to this document. When we’ve called the NOS/ANI representatives over the past year, the front line representatives told us that the non-usage charges have a negligible effect. When we asked how the non-usage charges are calculated they suggested that it is based on carrier tariffs that are hundreds of pages long that they don’t have access to. When we faxed them the two-page tariff summary they passed our call to a supervisor who suggested that all carriers bill for non-usage in some way and that NOS/ANI just did it honestly using TCUs.
Other carriers may or may not clandestinely pass non-usage charges onto their customers. That argument is best discussed at happy hour. What is clear is that many new NOS/ANI customers discover that the number of TCUs they buy from NOS/ANI by their third and fourth month of switching to NOS/ANI is double what the number of minutes was that they purchased per month from their previous carrier.
In general, it pencils out like this. If you’re paying 10 cents a minute today for 10,000 minutes a month from carrier XYZ, your phone bill is $1,000 per month. After talking to NOS/ANI about their 7.9 cent a minute deal and switching to their service you expect your monthly bill to drop to $790. For two months it does. But on your third NOS/ANI invoice you notice that the bill is $1,580 for what appears to be about 20,000 TCUs even though your call volume has remained consistent. You’ve just experienced NOS/ANI’s "fine print".
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