KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Jeannette Quinn starts each morning in prayer. Quinn, 80, usually had her daily devotional alone until a fellow school teacher told Quinn about a free conference call for a morning prayer circle and invited her to join.
"I did it every morning Monday through Friday," Quinn said.
That was until she got her first phone bill for $138. It turned out those "free" prayers were pretty expensive.
The "free" conference call required her to dial a long distance number, even though the pastor's wife leading the prayer circle was from a Kansas City church just a few blocks from her home.
"This is Reverend Cobbins' church. It's 14 blocks from me. I could get up there and drive there," Quinn said.
Quinn doesn't have free long distance and said she should have known better than to dial a number with a different area code. She paid the phone bill, but stopped calling the prayer circle in April.
But the charges kept coming.
There were $79.12 worth of charges in May. There were $42 worth of calls in June. And $27 in charges in July.
"I have not been making these calls," Quinn insisted. "So where are they coming from?"
She called her long distance provider, Affinity4, a phone service out of Oklahoma that promises to donate 10 percent of its earnings to conservative Christian causes.
Affinity4 insisted Quinn had to have made the calls because that's the only way they would have been on her bill. But Quinn said when many of the calls were made at a time she would have been driving to work.
After multiple complaints to Affinity4, the company gave her a four digit code to dial before using her long distance to protect her from fraud. It was only after she got the code, she said, the prayer circle calls stopped.
So how does Quinn get her money back for those calls she said she never made?
FOX 4 Problem Solvers called the company behind the free conference call -- Great Lakes Communications of Spencer, Iowa. A woman who answered the phone said Quinn's problem was definitely not caused by them. She promised, however, to have someone call us back so we could explain further, but no one ever did.
We then tried talking to Mrs. Cobbins, the pastor's wife running that prayer circle through the free conference call system. We paid a visit to the church, but Mrs. Cobbins wasn't there. However, an employee said he knew of no other complaints regarding the daily prayer circle. Still searching for answers, we left a phone message for Mrs. Cobbins, but she never returned our call.
So what can Quinn do? She's dumped Affinity4 since she believes she was erroneously billed, something Affinity4 adamantly denies. She's also filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission against Affinity4 and Great Lakes Communications.
Now Quinn is warning you. Beware of free prayer circles. They could cost you a bundle.