ZPDI and WXT Communications

Our Verizon bill for June included a charge from ZPDI for an operator assisted collect call to our home phone at 11:33 p.m. on May 1st. We never received such a call. Verizon told me I'd have to call ZPDI. I called ZPDI this morning (6/25/01)and Becky told me this was charged to me in error, that the error was in WXT Communications system, and that they would process a full credit for these related charges to me back to Verizon for a credit of $6.61 (collect call of $5.70 plus $0.91 for universal service fund useage) that would appear as a full credit on my next Verizon bill or the following bill.

I was, and remain, very upset that Verizon passed this phoney charge on to me and would not give me a credit themselves. If ZPDI could determine in a minute that it was an incorrect call, and if they are not involved with the scam, they should already have processed credits to everyone involved.

Received my monthly bill from Verizon and noticed that there was a $4.84 miscellaneous charge from Zero Plus Dialing for a collect call on April 30 at @2:30pm from a number in CO. Neither my wife nor I were home at the time to accept the call.

After reading your article about complaints against ZPDI practices, I realize this may be another scheme to covertly charge customers money on scam collect calls. Ordinarily most people would not notice a small ($4.85) charge on their phone bill and would pay it without question. However when I questioned Verizon about the misc charge, they said that it was a "computer billing mistake" on WST communications part. If this happened to a large group of Verizon customers and most would not dispute the charges ZPDI would have gotton away with a great scam.