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Cell Phone CEOs Marked For Phone Cloning
Saint Aardvark writes "When Sarah Drummond got back from Israel, she found a cell phone bill
for more
than $12,000. She contacted her
cell phone provider to let them know that someone had stolen her
phone, but they weren't interested in helping her and told her she'd
have to pay. In preparing for small claims court, she and her partner
found out that not only does her company have the ability to spot
unusual activity on a cell phone account, the company executives' own phones have
been targeted by a group linked to Hezbollah. From the article: 'They were
using actually a pretty brilliant psychology. Nobody wants to cut off
[CEO] Ted Rogers' phone or any people that are directly under Ted
Rogers, so they took their scanners to our building, like our north
building, where our senior top, top, top executives are. They took
their scanners there and also to Yorkville, where there are a lot of
high rollers and like it would be a major PR blunder to shoot first
and ask questions later. . . . Nobody wants to shut off Ted. Even if
he is calling Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Kuwait.'"
Because credit card companies are responsible for fraudulent charges and cell phone companies aren't.
My recommendation (IANAL): Take the settlement. The court fees will probably be more than the settlement!
I don't find the fact of who they're targetting, or the fact that they're cloning phones, all that shocking. I do, however, find it a bit fishy that these same (big) people have been _repeatedly_ targetted, and it has been noticed several times. You'd think that some sort of measure would have been put into place by now to at least curb the effectiveness of this tactic when used on these same people. I mean, after the first time my phone got cloned, I think I'd pass word down to the grunts to block calls to certain countries from that phone, as long as there wasn't a high "real" call volume there.
At any rate, after this being done several times, you'd think they would have some checks in place, but hey...when you own your own huge company, I guess paying your own bills isn't really an issue.
Fill in your four or five-letter word of wisdom here _ _ _ _ _.
Could somebody explain what does this mean? What is involved in cloning, and how does it work?
Where does the "terror" group come in? What are they trying to do here, and why is it a "terror group" if they aren't uh, terrorizing anybody?
And most importantly, what is the point of making some random person pay for a CEO's phone usage? Is it an attack against the CEO, her, or just intended to create problems for Rogers?
You should be able to set upper limits for your cell phone expenses, plus have people call you back if there is unusual activity.
Credit card companies do this for credit cards and it works fine. There is no reason not to do it for cell phones, other than that cell phone companies hope you'll run up lots of charges. The reason why they hope you do that is because, unlike credit card charges, cell phone charges are not real money. That is, if you complain about your $10000 cell phone bill, it costs them little to "forgive" it, whereas a $10000 credit card bill is real money.
Here's a simple solution... don't pay your bill! Just because you receive an invoice from a company, it does not mean that you need to pay it. If you want to dispute the charge, switch providers and let things run their course.
Now some people worry about their credit ratings... well up here in Canada, our credit bureaus are private corporations with very little responsibility to anyone and in fact there are only two. The credibility of the credit system in this country is weak at best. For example, if I decide to invoice each and everyone of you, and do not receive payment, I simply send this information to the credit bureau and a black mark is added to your record. You will NOT be notified, and likely won't discover this until you need to apply for credit. When you discover this blackmark, your only recourse is to have a note amended to your file to explain the accusation. Unfortunately this does little, if anything at all.
That's why, for any significant purchases (i.e. a mortgage on a home, or large car loan) creditors look to our income to debt ration first, and weigh that heaviest.
Long story short: don't pay the bill, and in a few years when it finally reaches court (after the company makes several attempts to settle for significantly less), explain your situation and countersue for court fees.
Hey - lets do some biz. I'll pad the invoices for $20K and then offer to settle for $2K. This way you can feel oh so good as I shake you down for $2000 bux.
The jerks just love people like you. Over time they figure out where the highbar is and cheat and steal just below this level. Most people will pay rather than fight. I suppose traffic tickets fall into this area as well. But then that is instutionalized right?
She couldn't put it in writing, because the legal definitions alone would've taken several pages. Verizon does not want to give too much grief to honest customers, who lost their phones, but it does not want to get taken by those, who lie about it either.
They, probably, look at each case individually, and that is, what she was trying to say.
That said, your advice to not trust (or partially discount) verbal promises is perfectly sound, of course, and applies to all business dealings.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
-bZj
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I posted this on my blog somewhile back: http://www.krunk4ever.com/blog/?p=56
What Grinds My Gears: I've probably made this rant before, but I really really hate the help cell phone service providers provide when you lose your phone. In other words, NO HELP. A friend recently lost his cell phone and it irked me since the T-Mobile was giving him the same bullshit they gave me. Once again, I could never see WHY they wouldn't help us track the phone or help the law enforcement track down the thief? What more easier way is there when a thief is carrying a tracking device!?!?! There should be a list of all reported stolen phones and when someone tries to make a call from that phone, it'll try to locate the person through triangulation and notify the nearest police department to that area (which is easily doable since 911 works on a cell phone). Another service easily providable is any call made from that phone no matter what # was dialed (besides emergency #s like 911) will be forwarded to 1 particular # which the own can set. I mean in the event where the owner loses the phone and the person who found the phone wants to return it, he'd probably try to call someone on that list and ask if they knew who owned this #. By being able to forward all calls to say your home line, you won't have to worry about long distance charges and you can be certain if they try to make a call, it'll be forwarded to you. Another extremely stupid idea is that when you lose your phone is that they recommend that you suspend your account to prevent the thief from putting charges on your bill. However if you're under contract, suspending your account VIOLATES the contract and you're forced to pay the cancellation fee. Which really only leaves you instead of suspending the account to immediately purchase a new phone and swap it onto the current plan. I've asked before if it was okay to suspend the account, but continue paying for the service until I could get a new phone. They apologize and said they couldn't do that. OH MY GOSH! I'm willing to pay for a service which I WILL NOT BE USING, but instead they make it harder on the customer and force them to either get a new phone immediate or suspend the service and pay the cancellation fee.
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