Thanks Stephan, I will give AllStream some points, they did detect the fraud... unfortunately it was 14.5 hours later. I can understand 24 hour notice, but it doesn't change the smell.
It happened on Christmas eve, roughly between 9:30pm and 11:30am. I really see no reason why this would go on so long. It's painfully obvious that software should have picked this up easily immediately. I don't disagree that costs should be covered (Allstream should not lose money on this). I do not blame the telco for the fraud at all. I am leaning toward blaming the Call Pilot installer from a year ago. But to say that Allstream is innocent and they should not profit from it, is wrong. Hearing that Unlimitel and Telnet give the client their cost rate is great, just covering their cost. That's honourable. But let's face it, they aren't multibillion dollar companies with multimillion dollar fraud groups. And most importantly, they don't charge those high rates (in this case less than 1/10th the rate). Pursuing this would be cost prohibitive and time zapping for a small telco. This is AllStream though, obviously giving a cost rate is great (paying half is still so high, but if you say that's their cost, then I believe it). But I would think that this dollar amount is large enough that Allstream will attempt to recover their own costs in the background on it in the coming weeks/months. Allstream will not just pay the other provider on the last leg the going rate and let it slide. If they do, then that would be wrong of them to let it slide and they are just feeding the flames. Chuck -----Original Message----- From: Stephan Monette [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: January-29-10 11:41 AM To: Nabeel Jafferali Cc: [email protected] Subject: Re: [on-asterisk] Long distance fraud... $24,000+ Nabeel is right. I never seen anyone being able to zero their bill on such issues. I have seen the provider reducing the bill to their cost to help. Now one thing you can do to help reduce the bill: ask AllStream why they never detected this fraud? They are suppose to have auditing systems in place and contact customers within 24 hours for abnormal international call volume. In our case, we contact the customer after just one hour. We run our audits every hour to detect possible frauds. It protects our customers and my business too because we have to pay our provider in this case too. Bell have audits in place and will contact the customer within 24hours to ask if everything is normal with all the international calls. If it's a retail customer, Bell will reduce the bill to their cost to help. If it's a wholesale customer, Bell will not reduce anything. I assume AllStream is probably the same. The invoice won't be zero, but it could be reduced to their cost if your customer is a retail customer and not a wholesale customer. Good luck! Stephan Monette Unlimitel Inc. On 2010-01-29, at 11:18 AM, Nabeel Jafferali wrote: > From one past experience - since the issue was with the customer's > equipment, they were held liable for the call charges (which, to be > honest, sounds logical - unfortunately). > > -- > Nabeel Jafferali > X2 Networks Inc. > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Chuck Mariotti [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: January-29-10 11:14 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: [on-asterisk] Long distance fraud... $24,000+ > > Anyone have any experience with large long distance phone bills ($20k) > that are fraudulent? The phone system was compromised via dial in / > call transfers. Overseas calls made. > > Specifically how to not have to pay All Stream because of it? What's > the common practice and outcome? I mean, I would imagine that All > Stream would get their costs back out of it eventually, how can they > pass that onto their client? How can I go about getting them to zero it out? > > Regards, > > Chuck Mariotti > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional > commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
