Still assembling the detritus of life following the trip. One odd item in the mail was a bill for $75 from some outfit called Talk America -- almost $60 of which was for some supposed calling plan. This for a guy whose combined local + LD usually falls below $40.

Who is this outfit, you ask? You may well. Over 1400 complaints have been filed against the company for slamming -- changing customer's long distance company without their permission. The company is under investigation in 10 of the 15 states it's active in for the practice, and by the FCC for good measure. What I'm trying to work out is how they got past my PacBell PIC freeze. There's asses to fry in several places.

It rebranded itself from "Talk.com" to "Talk America" earlier this year. Its president stepped down (was thrown the !@#$%^&*() out?) in May. One ray of sunshine: its quarterly losses have been stacking up, ballooning, really, most recently, at US$62.7 m on $133.7m revenues. It talked, briefly, of going into the broadband business. Partners have included Ameritech and AOL.

Googling [link|http://www.google.com/search?q=%60talk+america%60+slamming|"talk america" slamming] will give you an eyeful, this [link|http://www.thedigest.com/more/129/129-092.html|Washinton Times article] is a pretty good rundown of most of the issues. CNet adds [link|http://news.cnet.com/investor/news/newsitem/0-9900-1028-5898002-0.html|credit card abuse] to the laundry list.

Keep your eyes open out there.