?I got a $590 false bill from Verizon?

By: Janie Porter

Valrico, Florida – A Valrico woman, who claims Verizon slapped her with $590 in false charges, has won her battle with the telephone giant.

Shaila Touchton claims she always uses pre-paid Mother India international calling cards to make phone calls to her family in India. She says they’ve always had the same 1-800 number, and in the last two years since she moved to the U.S., Touchton says she’s never had a problem.

Until she checked her bill in July.

“$590 dollars excess they have charged us and I started talking to the customer service people. They put us on long holds for hours together,” Touchton said. She claims the $956 bill included $590 in extra charges for calls to India, Colorado and New Jersey.

Touchton and her husband claim they don’t even know anyone in those states. And they are always methodical, they say, when making calls to India.

“We never used this Verizon phone to make any international calls, but how can they charge for international calls like that?”

From July to mid-September, neither Touchton nor her husband made much progress with Verizon. Touchton says she made at least ten phone calls to the company and spent several hours on the phone.

The day after Tampa Bay’s 10 contacted Verizon, the company credited $607.51 Touchton’s account.

Although Verizon can’t prove it, spokesperson Bob Elek says Touchton must have mistakenly punched the wrong numbers as she used the international calling card. He says it then “moved [the call] over to the long distance calling plan and that didn’t have the unlimited international calling.”

When asked why it took months for Verizon to credit Touchton’s account, Elek said that it was because, at first, the dispute seemed clear-cut.

“It looked right initially because there was a long distance calling plan. It wasn’t until the information came to light and having one of our senior people looking at it to really put two and two together to really figure out what happened,” Elek said.

Touchton says she’s just glad to have her money back.