Slashdot Mirror
Verizon Offers Refunds For Fraudulent SMS Messages
itwbennett writes "Verizon has filed a lawsuit against a group of people and related companies that it alleges duped people into signing up and getting charged for premium short message services. Because some of the short message programs the defendants set up complied with Verizon's rules, Verizon says it is unable to identify which customers didn't know about the charges for the services. As a result it has set up a Web page where customers can file a claim form and get reimbursed if they were wrongly charged for the services."
premium sms is a kind of robbery with the benevolence of phone companies and the goberments that do not prohibit them
Does this mean the guy I was talking to isn't an Albanian prince and I'm not get my gold bars?
How many people have complained that Verizon representatives gloss over fees and other costs associated with the plans you choose?
It's overly complicated BECAUSE they can use that complication to make more money off you. Now Verizon has a company that's doing the very same thing they do...and they are driving out the competition with a lawsuit.
How much more complicated have Verizon plans gotten in the last few years?
Last time I looked, they had categories of phones. Regular phone, Multimedia phone, Smart Phone, I believe the multimedia phone category has been eliminated though.
So when you pick a phone, if it fits into that category, you must buy certain other increased services to activate that phone on their network.
Now you buy a multi-line plan....say a family plan consisting of 5 lines. You pay for a package of minutes they all share, simple enough. But then add in the phone categories. Now each phone has to have extra services. And it's per number. So now your nice simple plan breaks down into per line charges.
And why does texting cost so fucking much in comparison to voice? Texting is so much less data being sent in small packets while voice requires so much more infrastructure......why does sending a text cost 30 cents a text or 15-20-30 dollars a month? I don't even use texting, but that has always baffled me. It's a pointlessly expensive thing, since using it would make it cheaper for Verizon to handle more traffic.
All mobile carriers are pointlessly complicated and shady, because it makes them more money being that way.
that was/is practically their business plan. they didn't care even if the sw they were selling was obviously fraud or almost fraud(with the defense that because the adverts are colorful you shouldn't take them seriously.. so you shouldn't have sued them for selling you a subscription in order for you to get a mosquito repellent software that couldn't even technically work like the advert said).
so how surprising is it that there's copycats for it? not at all. also the sms billing and fleecing business around it is the reason why mobile sw took a while to get really up, yes, it was the companies which would have profited from it had it gone more mainstream that made it too expensive for it to get really popular, who wants to buy a coke or a game with a payment method that leaves most of the money to the operators in the mix, with software it's not so obvious but with coke etc you see the price hike straight in the bill. also this is why ridiculously it's possible to make a setup where an actual call is used for the billing, even though that ends up as more traffic in the operators network it ends up being cheaper for the guy providing the service and for the customer using the service. sms's could be very well used for miniscule payments had their billing structure been more sensible(it's not a network congestion thing why the value of sending sms had been valued so high, it's a traditional thing from being able to bill people 25 cents for sending 160 characters).
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
They couldn't make the claims page part of the main verizon website? The css and layout are so different, I was asking myself "Is this a scam?" Even the url is dubious. It appears genuine, but if people were smart (which they aren't) they would be careful about where they type in their personal information. Seems like a pretty nice scam to me: Set up registration form somewhere on the web. Submit inflammatory articles to slashdot linking to said form. Steal all the email accounts you want.
I have AT&T and they block them I was paying for incoming spam.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
My older son was being billed for $9.95/month and when I called Verizon and asked about it, they gave him a refund and blocked out the ptxt service. One call to 611 got the whole thing worked out. It was annoying, but Verizon fixed the problem.
But considering I've met many people who send more than 50 texts per day, so they are clearly very good at comunicating with texts.
Nah, they're usually just too ADHD to talk to one person at a time.
SMS is great for avoiding conversation while communicating with others, and that most definitely has its merits. However, I remember that, as a teenager, I often talked to girls using instant messaging because it allowed me to compose myself without saying something stupid. Unfortunately though, the stuff it left out eventually taught me that flirting via IM was a foolish and questionably effective endeavor.
Conversation is as much a game as it is a form of art or a tool for communication. Handicapping yourself by limiting your control over that game, your canvas for the art, or a choice of the inferior or improper tool for the sake of----whatever the hell the reason is----when you could simply talk to someone to communicate more efficiently or more accurately in the majority of situations is just... stupid.
And don't even get me started on how I'm supposed to understand 160 characters of nonsense without *any* punctuation.....
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
I've received these sorts of "premium" (ie crap) messages in the past and it was a pain to get Verizon to block premium text messages on my account. And why wouldn't it be? They make money when that sort of thing happens. Know your rights. Educate yourself regarding the sort of features and options that your carrier offers. Don't be the "good customer" when this happens to you. Then call your state attorney general's office and find out where you can lodge a complaint.
The fact SMS isn't a completely free service is mind numbing.
Why do they charge extra for it?
Because they can.
A few years back, I got slammed with something like this when I stupidly let someone use my number cause they didnt have a phone. After calling Verizon, they refunded my money and put something on my account to block the possibility of me being signed into any of this shit ever again.
I interviewed with these guys a couple of years ago to run their IT department. They were really vague about what their actual service was. I let the interview early as nothing felt right. Though they did seem to have tons of $.
They're now going by the name of Jawa and are at http://jawa.com/ . They're pushing a happy charitable face but doing the same crap as they were before.
-J