Here is how the scam works. My wife was in town and she couldn’t find a working pay phone, even tough she had plenty of spare change. So she made a collect call to me that lasted maybe, 30-seconds.

It went like this:

My wife: “I just got out, come pick me up at the same place.”

Me: “OK.”

Click.

For that NCIC charged me $32.85 cents. There were two calls made from the same area, we didn’t know by the second time, because we had not received the phone bill. So we have another $32.85 cents headed our way. The bill also claimed that the phone call was 6-minutes long! Oh, really?

Also, there was no warning what the cost of those collect calls were going to be. Not at the phone booth or by the operator handling the calls.

My phone co., PRTC (now Claro), told me I had to call them and try and get the charges either lowered or canceled. That didn’t go so well, I was still charged $9.80. They discounted only $23.03 cents. ¡Que clava, mi hermano!

After that experience, I went online and Googled this company, and found that they have been doing this for as far back as seven years!

No wonder they will not repair the public phones. They are hoping that people like my wife will make collect calls. And before you ask “why not get cell phones?” Because I really have no need for the extra expense. I really hate to be called anyway, I can just imagine myself going nuts with a cell phone on me. LOL! This is not the issue.

The issue and the question here is why has this company been allowed to do this for so long? Especially with all the gripes I found online, and all true; as I can see that most of the experiences are just like ours.

Anyone else for more regulations? How about another 10 government agencies? This is why I have always been against government regulation. Government regulations hamper use as individual citizens and gives us a false sense of security. What has the FCC been doing here? Downloading porn? Like the SEC agents?

I am the tech that keeps his computer running. And I have installed software like AVG's free antivirus and have helped him to understand it enough to use it himself. But as time goes on, he forgets how to use it. It's not one of the applications he runs often, and as he tells me, it's his advanced age that makes him forget. LOL!

So, due to his advanced age, he forgot that he had an antivirus and bought one because a window popped-up claiming that his computer was vulnerable! We can catch fraudulent advertising like this because we have seen it a thousand times and probably were smart enough not to fall for it the first time we encountered it. Not only did he pay $109! Can you believe it? He also bought malware:XP Antivirus 2008. Unbelievable!

This thing made his computer slower, and kept popping up his Internet dial-up connection at start-up. Sadly, there are many, many web surfers online with the same lack of knowledge that are had in just the same way.

Why do these companies continue to operate for so long. It's beyond me. The feds enjoy getting into everything, so where are the feds when you need them to step in? Clearly INNOVAGEST 2000 S.L. is running a fraudulent operation and should be shut down.