
Eric of Pullman, WA on Sept. 30, 2002
I am the treasurer for our church. The Verizon telephone bill for the church, dated August 19, 2002 contained a bill from a company called ILD Teleservices for a "Nat'l Online Internet Monthly Fee" of $29.95. The phone number for ILD listed on the bill is 800 433-4518. On September 23, 2002 I placed a call to ILD Teleservices. After a 15-minute wait, I spoke with Miguel, who informed me that ILD simply passed the charges on, while the charges originate from a company called National Online Services. He gave me a phone number of 800 511 2077.
I called this number on September 23, 2002, and received a busy signal multiple times over a period of one hour. I called again on 9/30/2002, and after a 12 minute wait spoke with Tessa. She claims that Greg H authorized a free 30-day trial of this service on June 27, 2002. Upon expiration of the 30 day trial, they began to bill the church the $29.95 fee. I asked Tessa to cancel the service and remove the charges. She gave me a cancellation number. I asked her if she would remove the charges from the bill and she said that she could not do this. The best she could do was to cancel the service.
I spoke with Greg, the pastor of the church, who said that he did not authorize such a service, and does not remember even speaking with this company. The church uses a local ISP and has no reason to sign up for an alternative service. I was able to locate what appears to be the web site of National Online Internet Services at http://www.nonline.net/. The dialup numbers for this internet company are listed at http://www.nonline.net/dialup.html. Note that all such numbers would be long distance for the church, so it would make no sense for the church to sign up for such a service. I do not wish to pay the $30+ fee for the internet service that we never used. However, what I am more concerned about is the fact that other companies (possibly churches?) may be getting the same unauthorized charges and not realizing it.