Verizon did describe the third party service saying it was news alerts, celebrity gossip. These were actually two seperaite companies charging us but had similar descriptions. When we asked for contact information of the Third Party Services, Verizon would say again, and again that information should is in our bill however nothing is there. They did give us the websites of the companies.

Verizon offered to opt out / unsubscribe each phone line affected by the charges. They also blocked each phone line from being contacted by Premium Texting Vendors in the future at no extra charge.

My parents are in their 60's they have no interest or reason to sign up for Premium Texting. They don't need news alerts or celebrity gossip. They never signed up for this service. Verizon wouldn't refund the money, and we will be reporting this to their fraud department tomorrow.

http://www.signup.testplansite.com

http://www.enlist.worldtexts.com

I went to the websites they gave us and they're fake, web templates from www.w3.org with links that go to nowhere. They're more like splash pages and they don't have any logos to show they're an a credited e-commerce site. The websites were also missing contact info.

I did send an email to signup test plansite support (I got the e-mail address from Verizon not the website), which sent my an auto reply and now I have a phone number to call.

I found that these two websites are from the same company by clicking on their privacy policy links which both took me to a website called http://www.networkadvertising.org/index.asp

From what I can tell Network Advertising Initiative is the company sending the charges. How they got our phone info is a mystery and concerning. Why they seemed to invest a lot of time in hiding contact info is concerning.

We will be pursuing this matter further most likely going through the Verizon Fraud Department.

I know very well that when you are a Verizon customer you are given the run around. Trying to speak to a person is sometimes difficult when you call their 800 numbers. But let don't them charge you for services you didn't sign up for. It is scary to me that even let a companies like this charge our accounts without us knowing. Even when it is obvious that the companies appear to less than honest or even fake.