Psychic Didn’t Mention Future Bills

HUNTINGTON BEACH â€”  Elaine Briers wishes she could have talked to a psychic in the flesh before her daughter called a psychic hotline.

Maybe the psychic could have warned her: The future don’t come cheap.

Briers, 41, a local businesswoman, said her 12-year-old daughter, Georgina, a sixth-grader at Huntington Christian School, had to learn the hard way.

Back in February, Briers’ daughter made what the girl and her mother thought was a toll-free call to one of the dozens of psychic hotlines whose infomercials appear with thudding regularity on cable television.

The kid was curious, her mom said; she merely wished to know what a psychic might say--if, in fact, they can forecast the future with uncanny accuracy, as the TV spot claimed they could.

Lest her daughter do something untoward, Briers stood beside the girl as she dialed the digits. After a lengthy recording, Briers said, a human being came on the line to ask them to call the several-dollars-a-minute 900 number--never once offering a word of advice.

Not only that, Briers said, the voice failed to mention the phone bills that would storm into her mailbox like troops on a seek-and-destroy mission. Briers described it as a force that tore through her pocketbook like a psychic tornado.

In the months since her daughter made the call, Briers has received consistently larger bills, all stemming, the phone company tells her, from that solitary call to soothsayers.

“I just recently received a new bill, and for the third month in a row, they’ve gotten bigger and bigger,� Briers said, noting that the charges kept increasing inexplicably. “It started out as a single $48 charge, then came two more months’ worth of charges for $96 each, for a grand total of $240--which I refuse to pay. All from one silly little call.�

Bob Gannon, supervising deputy district attorney for the Orange County consumer protection unit, said Briers is hardly alone. Everyone needs to be wary, Gannon said, of buying something from a stranger they’ve never met on the other end of a phone line.

“Most people in the telephone solicitation business are nothing other than crooks,� he said. “And 800 numbers can be as risky as 900 numbers. A lot of people out there running boiler-room operations nationwide are using 800 numbers.

“The thing that sends a red flag up the pole for us is someone wanting you to part with your money when you’ve never seen the person or get the pitch over the television.�

Briers said she complained to her phone company, GTE, and to Integretel, the name appearing next to the charges attached to the hotline her daughter phoned. (Integretel is not the psychic hotline but rather the third-party company that handles its billing.) Both say they’re investigating, but Briers said neither has left her satisfied, nor assured her she doesn’t owe the money.

“One day recently, I spent my entire lunch hour trying to track this down and got nowhere,� Briers said. “I finally got through to Integretel, and they offered no advice and no solution. She said, ‘We’ll take it off your bill,’ but then it showed up on the next bill and the one after that.�

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When contacted by The Times, GTE officials declined comment, though a spokeswoman said that “thousands� of consumers are periodically “duped� by telemarketers and infomercial “con artists.�

A call to the San Jose-based Integretel produced a male executive who asked not to be quoted by name. He said Integretel handles only telephone-related billing matters, such as the monthly charges that appeared on Briers’ statement. In other words, he said, they only bill what the hotline asks them to bill.

“We’re the third party,� he said. “Nothing more.�

While Briers swears she peered over her daughter’s shoulder while she made the call, even listening in at times, the Integretel spokesman said the girl had to have answered yes to a series of questions by punching certain keys. Otherwise, he said, no one would have been billed.

Briers’ retort: “No way, no how, no chance that is true. It just didn’t happen like that, I don’t care what he says.�

Minors are prohibited from even using “psychic services,� the Integretel executive said; therefore she must have punched “yes� when asked if she were over 18. To have been billed repeatedly for psychic-hotline-related charges means the girl must have also answered “yes,� he contended, when asked if she wished to subscribe to the hotline’s services.

“No way,� said a fuming Briers.

Oh, well, not to worry, the Integretel spokesman assured: He’s already taken steps to ensure that Briers won’t be billed. She may not notice the erased charges until her June or July statement, he said, “but she definitely won’t be billed.�

Briers, who works for a box company, has felt totally boxed in by her monthly bill, which was soaring into the serious three digits. From an emotional standpoint, she said, the damage has been done.

She now bears a psychic scar.

The most frustrating chapter of a frustrating saga was not being able to reach a resolution to the billing crisis, she said, and being made to feel like a nincompoop for even raising the complaint. She doesn’t know who to blame--the hotline, GTE, Integretel, all of the above, none of the above.

Briers sighed and said, “I hope I never again have to deal with a psychic. Please, tell your children: Stay away from strangers . . . and psychics too!�