Who is your phone carrier -- really?

I was in my IT service provider's office on Friday. This provider also hosts and maintains all of my websites and my client's sites. I was with the owner and one of the web designers discussing a project. As an added note, this provider is also a client...I do their bookkeeping.

The provider's office is in the downtown area of West Allis WI a suburb of Milwaukee.

A young man wearing a dark suit and tie and carrying a black leather-looking portfolio stopped in. He told the employee that was at the front desk that he was from AT&T and needed to renew their contract. The employee directed this young man to see the owner. The young man said he needed to update the AT&T contract but needed to see the most recent bill. Brian, the owner, told the young man that he didn't have AT&T. (He doesn't) The young man proceeded to say, "but you use AT&T lines." Brian told the guy that he did not use AT&T lines and then asked the young man to leave his business card as he had been interrupting our meeting. The young man said he had left his cards in his car. Since I do a/p for this client, I chimed in and asked for the young man's AT&T ID. He said that since he was in sales that he didn't need one. BULL.

This guy was out to scam companies in the area to switch to another phone service or worse. Had Brian given this guy a copy of the AT&T bill all kinds of information could be gathered.

Another part of this cautionary tale is the fact that a few weeks before this meeting I received a letter from AT&T that said if I didn't call them by November 12th that my current contract would expire and that my rates would increase. Several weeks before receiving the letter I had called AT&T to do my renewal and thought I was all set for 2009. But to be on the safe side, I called the number in the letter. I entered my phone number in the prompt as one always does when calling AT&T Customer Care so I didn't think anything odd about it at the time. The person that finally answered the phone asked for my phone number again and the name of my company and other information that they should have been able to see on their computer prompt if they were really AT&T. The person that answered the phone seemed to be in some distant country and it also sounded as though he was in a room with a bunch of other telemarketers. He asked me what services I had such as voice mail, long distance, international calling and voice mail. I didn't respond. He should have known that.

I was very suspicious about the call that I had just made and told the person that I would call him back after I could verify a few things. I called AT&T at a number that I have on file. They told me that the letter I received was bogus.

The sad part about this is that if a small business gets scammed they usually may not have the same legal resources as a consumer. Business owners should know better.