sundance-communications.com/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Directory Assistance Billing Problem

I am regularly being billed for calls to Directory Assistance by Qwest Communications. Although I told Qwest that I have never made a call to 411, they maintain that the calls are coming from my telephone number.

What could be the cause of this problem and what is the remedy? Would changing my telephone number solve the problem?

My telephone service includes the following:

1) I have a landline POTS service(touch tone)with no additional calling features such as caller ID, call waiting, call forwarding, voicemail, etc.

2) I do not have any answering machines connected to my telephone line.

3) I do not have a cordless telephone or any other cordless/wireless devices in my home.

4) I do not live in an apartment/condo complex so the possibility of a cross-connection of my telephone line with the telephone line of an adjacent unit is not an issue.

5) Since I live in a single-person household, I am the only person who has access to the telephone. Please do not suggest-as Qwest representatives have-that a relative, a friend, or some other visitor to my home are making calls to Directory Assistance. That is not possible!

Your comments, suggestions, and solutions.

unless your cat or dog is dialing it sounds like quest has a billing problem.ask for a supervisor,
if they can't help ask for their boss.
good luck!

Have Qwest turn it over to their Security dept. Shouldn't be hard to track it down if it's showing up on your bill.

Just because you are not in an apartment building, your line could still be working on a jack at another address. This could be miles away from you. This happens very frequently, especially in older areas. Someone could have had a second line installed years ago that used the cable pair that your line now uses. The problem is, it didn't get disconnected from the other address. As Bill said, have Qwest's security department get involved.

What are the dates and times of the calls? Are they happening during times when you are out of the house? What Ed mentioned is very true. Insist that you did not make the calls and insist that Qwest sends a tech out to check terminal appearances for a left on loop, CT, or whatever terminology uses for a connection being left on your line due to a disconnect or a rearrangement. Your dial tone can appear at any number of terminals. I told a friend to do this when she was having a similar issue with Verizon. Verizon dropped the charges. Repair may be able to do this for you or you may have to ask for Security to get involved.

A second, and admittedly remote, possibility is dialing a number and reaching a recording saying the number is disconnected. An option is offered to hit a specific digit to connect to the new number. I ran into this when I was trying to verify some charges on a County line. The service was not provided by the regional company (Verizon). It was a small provider. I don’t know if Qwest does anything like this.

Ask the company to provide you with a daily usage report. Ask for 30 day's worth. All dialed activity will be there. As suggested above, correlate the calls to times you were home.

There are cheap devices available that will dial any 1,2,3, or more digit number when your phone goes off-hook. I have used one of these, programmed to dial ** when I was having the same type of trouble on a customer's line. The immediate dialing of the nonsensical ** prevented any other person who was bridged onto the line from dialing anything useful.

You can also put a voice-activated recorder on your line, and hear any activity that takes place when you are home, and not on the phone, or away from home.

Do you ever pick up the phone and hear others speaking?

Please keep us posted on your efforts and results. Many of us do this type of investigating for a living. We can help.

One question still remains unanswered - Will changing my telephone number solve this problem?

There are a lot of issues that need to be discussed before that question can be answered.

Probably "NO" is the answer.

Unless you do some investigating, as suggested, to determine if the calls are actually being made from your physical line (see my list of questions and suggestions above, which you have not answered yet) we would have no way of knowing if this is a physical problem (in other words, a person intentionally or unintentionally using your line to make calls) or an administrative problem (the equipment that tallies calls recording someone else's calls incorrectly and charging you for them.)

If the former, then the answer is NO, because the new telephone number would presumably use the same COE (central office equipment, like a computer port) and the same facilities (meaning the cables, wires, and terminals that supply the dial tone to you.)

You need to call the phone company, as suggested, and report the problem as you perceive it, but to do that, you need to do the investigating.


Do you hear others on your line when you pick up the phone?

Do you get other charges for calls that you are sure you didn't make?

Do you have flat-rate local, regional and long-distance service?

Do the calls occur in any time/day pattern?

Have you had the phone company repair person check your physical line for taps, left-in cross-connections, left-in drop wires, or other wire issues?

The fact that you say that the calls in dispute are only 411 calls leads me to believe the following:

1. Someone has discovered a live line (yours) in his apartment or house that is live due to a left-in connection.

2. The person realizes that he is using someone else's line, illegally. That is why there are no other billable calls showing up...regular calls can be traced, and directory calls, by their nature, cannot be.

Changing your number is not the answer.