OAN Services, Ideal Savings Now, Ideal Voicemail, AccessVM billing FRAUD
This SCAM isn’t directly related to credit and collections, but it explains why and how so many scammers get away with FRAUD.
OAN Services seems to either sign up unsuspecting visitors of their websites for voice mail or they bill entirely fraudulent calls.
You NEVER provide a credit card number and they add the charges to your PHONE BILL.
Steve Kirsch prepared this outstanding summary, explaining WHY it works:
OAN Services and Ideal Savings Now, Ideal Voicemail, AccessVM, etc.
I was surprised to see a $14.95 charge suddenly appear on my phone bill. It was billed through OAN Services on behalf of Ideal Savings Now. Both companies seem to be fly-by-night companies with no visible management team, no physical address, and no employees…only a call center that you call which admits to servicing calls for at least 7 different voicemail companies.
OAN Services uses 1 800 295-3933. They seem to have no website, no management team…just a phone number for a call center. They refer you to Ideal Savings Now to cancel your subscription.
Ideal Savings Now website is at www.idealvoicemail.com which lists a street address of: 160 West Camino Real #139| Boca Raton, FL 33432 866-982-8744.
To call to complain about Ideal Savings Now, you call 1-866-383-3513 (per your phone bill). They answer the phone as “membership billing services” and seem to be the “customer service” for all these companies. When I asked for a mailing address for Ideal Savings Now, they gave me PO Box 2950 in Las Vegas, NV.
www.accessvm.com has EXACTLY the same offer as Ideal Savings Now, virtually same website, and a phone number which is virtually the same as Ideal Savings Now! 129 NW 13th Street, Suite #D22 | Boca Raton, FL 33432 1-866-982-8741.
Both companies started on on July 10, 2008. How’s that possible? It’s only possible if someone is deliberately trying to mislead you with all sorts of bogus addresses and company names.
Other numbers used:
866-904-4019
Other names used:
Access SavingsThey are also linked to this website:
http://smartestofall.com/http://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-866-846-1744 shows that the two firms also use nearly identical emails. In short, it’s the same company, they just change their name to avoid detection. This is a very common technique by scam artists.
Apparently my wife had clicked on a link which subscribes you to this voicemail service without your “active” knowledge (it is probably in the fine print somewhere on some website; that is how they do this and avoid criminal prosecution).
This is the perfect scam because it’s completely legal and you can never go to jail if you are caught and no class action attorney will ever go after them.
It’s been going on since July 2008 or earlier. I’ll bet they’ve made millions of dollars from people who don’t read every line item in their phone bill.
Here’s why they will probably never be stopped from ripping people off and never go to jail:
Since they are covered by their bills since you “agreed” to it, it isn’t criminal so they keep themselves from facing criminal charges or jail time.
If you complain, they happily refund the charge since that is easy for them to do since so few people notice it. But most people never notice the charge added to their phone bill.
AT&T totally knows about them. They are one of the companies that AT&T gets the most complaints about according to the service rep I talked to. However, they admit that due to the law, they are powerless to stop them. By law, phone companies MUST make their systems available to ANY third party biller, no matter how many complaints they get or how deceptive or illegal their business practices are. So they phone companies cannot shut them off ever, thanks to Congress!
Secondly, getting the Florida Attorney General to go after them is impossible. The Florida AG doesn’t pursue these types of cases.
Class action attorneys will never go after them because collection is impossible. Florida is the hardest state in the US to collect on and these people have low profiles and probably send the money overseas. Even if you could get a big class action judgment, you’d never collect because there are no “people” who are findable. They’ll just disappear.
Individuals will never go after them because they happily refund your money. And who would pay an attorney to collect a $50 debt? Not going to happen.
Therefore the only way to stop this scam is really hard which is why I think this is the perfect way to fleece people:
- Congress passes a law to allow phone companies to refuse to do business with any third party biller that bills on behalf of any company with a history in engaging in deceptive business practices.
- Congress passes a law to make this sort of behavior criminal on the part of the scamming company persons and the billing company people who knew of the scam but continued to allow it.
- That this sort of scam is made to be a crime, either by state law or federal law. If done by a state, the scammers will simply not pursue any customer in that state, forcing all 50 states to enact such a law
This is just like all these “FREE” credit reports that are NOT free because it’s often not possible to cancel without spending half an hour on the phone, nor are they the credit reports consumers expect to receive — they’re missing half the credit data and are practically useless.
Peter Seebach posted about OAN Services and got over 400 comments!
Spurious collect call charges – a new scam? “OANWEB.COM”
Dec 11, 05:40 AM
— Peter SeebachSo, I got a call billed to my account “on behalf of Nationwide Connections, Inc.”. Listing the phone number 1-800-944-9646, and the web page www.oanweb.com. They claim that we got a 4-minute collect call, on November 7th, at 11:08 AM. We didn’t; our caller ID log shows no calls at all on November 7th, not even “OUT OF AREA”.
OANWEB ripoffs are apparently not unheard of.
What’s interesting is the apparent difficulty of contesting charges. Qwest says they are forwarding this bill “as a service to OAN services inc”, but OAN services, who are (from their page) obviously not any kind of long distance company, but rather, a small-time financial scam organization of some sort, are probably just ripping people off by bits and pieces here and there.
I’ll see whether I can make any progress on this.
It’s incredible what scammers come up with and even more incredible that our government couldn’t possibly care less.
Filed under: Scam and
I am actually one of the people taking calls for this company and getting ready to quit. Every single call I get everyone says they did not order the service. Management tells us they ordered online but come on, really, every single person I talk to didnt know they ordered? Yea right!!! I hope this can be stopped and do not want to be caught up in a scam of a job like this.
I used to work either for this company or one very much like it. It felt way to scammish from Day 1!!!! I worked there only a few months until I got another job secured. It’s a shame that we at mothers have to provide this kind of sickening service just to put food on our table. But I felt so sorry for each and every person that called and esp. for the ones that never called at all who were unsuspecting. This has gone on longer than 2008. I quit this company in 2009 and there were charges going back to 2006 on some people’s bills. Do not ever ever ever sign up for anything online ….. it’s a shame these vultures exist.