Carroll County Times Articles
Welcome To the World of Telephony, Part I
by Mike Shelah – June 18, 2006
What is all this stuff on my Verizon bill?
This is a question that is meaningful to practically every business owner and professional here in Carroll County.
Okay, you open your Verizon bill and probably don't even read through it. If you're used to paying around $500 a month and it comes in at $520, what's the big deal? The big deal is something called casual billing. Also called slamming or cramming.
Casual Billing
Casual billing is when a company other than Verizon places a charge on your telephone bill. It is called “cramming” because they tend to bury it 5 or 6 pages deep in the bill in the hopes that you wont see it. One of the most common culprits is a company called ESBI. Verizon will tell you they are just a third party billing company and that another company with another contact number is the real company. By calling this company to cancel, you will typically save yourself $20-$40 a month. How common is this? On two in five phone bills I see have an ESBI charge with the account holder having no idea what it is or how it got there.
Slamming
Now slamming is flat out illegal (and happily, less common). When you select a long distance provider, they each have a unique PICC (pre inter-exchange carrier code,) so when you look at the last few pages of your bill, you will see line by line a PICC and an LPICC. The LPICC is local calling ( 1+ dialing in state). When slamming occurs, a second carrier changes some or all of the PICC for each of your telephone lines, from your carrier of choice to them. This is bad because they can literally charge you any per minute rate they want.
Step One
Look at the page on your Verizon Bill marked “Verizon services and equipment information.” It is usually the last few pages of the bill. Here, each line is listed and will tell you all features associated with that particular line. The lines that tell you “interlata carrier” and “intralata carrier” will have a 3 letter code immediately after them. For example, Verizon's code is “BAW” ATT's code is “ATX” and Qwest's code is “LGT” if they don't match for each line, that is a slam.
How common is slamming? Deliberate slams occur only approximately 1 in every 30 telephone bills. But the accidental slam (where the LPICC and PICC don't match line by line) occurs about 50% of the time.
Step Two
Call the telephone company and let them know which lines are incorrect. They can usually have it corrected in a day or two.
In my next article, I will discuss all those pesky little charges on your Verizon bill that you don't need and have the right to change.
About the Author
Mike Shelah works for Distributed Computing, Inc., and is an advisor of the Carroll Technology Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating businesses, government and residents about technology issues. Questions are welcomed and may be addressed in future articles. Email advisors@carrolltechcouncil.org or go to www.carrolltechcouncil.org for a list of Advisor categories.
Article content is the view of the author, and not necessarily the viewpoint of the Carroll Technology Council.
