I got my Verizon phone bill for our land line the other day and there was a seemingly fraudulent charge from Doink Media for $30 on it. I know what you're thinking - what's a land line? Yes, we still have a land line at our house. Sadly, the cellphone reception at our house is terrible. It doesn't matter if you have Verizon, ATT, or T-Mobile. They're all terrible at our house. I have no idea why. There are not a lot of trees around us. Perhaps there's a secret NSA tower blocking the signal near us.
Anyway, I got this charge and I had no idea what it was. Doink Media? Who the heck is that? I immediately called Verizon and asked them what it was. They said it was a third-party billing, so it's not their problem. Oh, yeah??? It becomes your problem when I post the issue on Twitter, Facebook, and on my blog. They said they could cancel the current bogus charges, but we'd need to contact Doink Media to resolve the problem so that future charges would not be billed to me.
I then Googled Doink Media, as that seemed like the most reasonable second response. Common sense tells me that if you Google a company's name, the first item returned in the search is the website for the company. First hit - Yahoo! Answers - Is Doink Media a scam? The third item - www.complaintsboard.com. Yup. This is fraud.
I contacted Doink Media and they looked at my account. They said that they provide credit monitoring services and that we signed up for it by completing a survey in a pop-up window. No we didn't. Liar. Fraud. Anyway, they cancelled our account without any resistance and gave me the usual contact information and confirmation number. Oh, and I was helped by Beth. Beth who has a thick Indian accent. Every time I spoke to her I should have used a more realistic Indian name. "Thank you, Swetha." "You've been very helpful, Rishi." "Have a nice day, Arshia."
So in conclusion, keep an eye on your land line phone bill for fraudulent charges. All 5 of you that still have land lines.
