Only the company that put the charge there could take it off. My phone company didn't have control of the billing, you see, a third company was in charge of the billing. Supposedly, we're getting a partial refund, but it might take two bills to be credited.
I should have been looking closer at the phone bills when they came in. This was going on for months. Today, I noticed it was larger than I remembered (it's paid by an automatic charge to his credit card, & he didn't notice the change either). We called the contact number, & was told he signed up via their website in June. It was a voice mail "service" -- never used, never activated, but they happily collected $14.95 per month.
I'm home doing bills for Thanksgiving weekend. (I stopped doing the family thing after the "it's a christian nation" justification from my SIL for why gays shouldn't have rights.) So, with an uncluttered long weekend, I finally noticed.
It's a surreal phone conversation when someone, with a calm voice, is explaining how obvious fraud isn't fraud and they're entitled to the money when no service was rendered. "We sent you an email." -- would have been deleted as spam. I wonder how many other people they've phished & scammed.
Life lesson & all that. If the "service" company had sent us a separate bill, it wouldn't have been paid. However, they got it somehow added to our phone bill. And the phone company wasn't very careful about who can tag onto their bills. I don't know if other businesses than phone companies do "bundled billing", but check your bills for piggybacking frauds!
The conversation with the phone company got garbled, and the phone "service" person was telling me they couldn't stop this other monthly charge (it turned out to be the same thing we already cancelled). I thought I made a reasonable request: that's a bogus charge, stop billing us for it & stop paying that other company. I don't know what that is. If it's legitimate, the legitimate company will contact us & we'll get it straightened out.
The phone company rep told me (again, in a calm voice, as if this was totally reasonable) -- he didn't have the ability to stop that payment. It's another company doing the billing. Excuse me? It's the phone company's bill! How can they not have responsibility? Why are they cooperating with fraud? Etc. I was going on a righteous rant ... but my partner took back the phone & got the other phone number to call. It turned out it was a 2nd number for the same voice mail service, so I didn't get to press the issue. Is that bogus or what?