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Phone Customers Pay $2B Yearly In Bogus Fees
Hugh Pickens writes writes "CNN reports that a one-year study by the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee shows about $2 billion a year in 'mystery fees' show up on the landline phone bills of Americans. Known as cramming, the extra charges include:long distance service, subscriptions for Internet-related services, access to restricted websites, entertainment services with a 900 area code, collect calls, and club memberships. The Commerce Committee's report says phone companies receive a small fee — often just a dollar or two — for allowing charges from third-party vendors to appear on their bills but due to the large number of customers the charges eventually add up. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan told the panel people are unaware their phone numbers can be charged almost like a credit card and her investigations indicate customers are not even getting services in return. 'My office has yet to see a legitimate third-party charge on a bill,' says Madigan, who added most customers don't detect the charges on their bills. Senator Jay Rockefeller says Congress needs to pass legislation to protect customers from unauthorized third-party charges on their phone bills because the telephone industry has failed to prevent the practice. 'It's pretty obvious at this point that voluntary guidelines aren't solving this problem,' says Rockefeller. 'It's time for us to take a new look at this problem and find a way to solve it once and for all.'"
You call the phone company and demand they block all third party charges. They will hem and haw about how your life will suck without them. also with that block all fee phone number exchanges... yes they can do that as well. I got further and block all international calling as well. If I want to talk to Gunther in Germany, I'll use Skype or a calling card that is massively cheaper.
Honestly they need to default to all this crap being blocked and you have to call to enable it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
US landlines aren't a simple billing exercise. First you need a local carrier, this is say $30/month for "free local calls". Then you need a national carriers (could be the same company), this requires a monthly subscription too. Then you need, yes, you guessed it, an international carrier. There's a default to pick up the national and internationals, but the rates can be very high. Miss dial and that unconnected call can cost $4. Once you navigate this setup you get banged with umpteen levels of taxes and fees, which never seem to be the same month to month.
Things may have improved over the last few years, we gave up with land lines and use vonage's $25/month service (uses internet for connections but acts as as real phone system). This settled our national and international costs (free) for a while, but then the patent mess started and the FCC decided to stick its oar in. We now pay about $34/month for the $25/month service thanks to taxes and fees. Which is a hell of a lot better than regular phone companies (for us).
Got family that works for a big phone company. Not a fan of the company mind you. Just wanted to give a shot at telling you what they told me about this whole mess.
Under the telecom act of 1996, the big phone companies at least, ATT, the 2 others, they're kinda between a rock and a hard place. The law requires that if some of these little piddly shit regional guys give them a signed LOA saying the customer wants a service, the phone company is REQUIRED BY LAW to push the billing through. Further, they are FORBIDDEN BY LAW to call and ask you if that's really your signature and if you really want this to go through.
Now they are required to do basic due diligence on the companies doing this. They have to make sure they're at least in appearance on the up and up. And if they get crap tons of people complaining about it they can eventually tell said company to take a hike, but it isn't instantaneous.
Anyways, the point is this isn't... entirely the big telecoms fucking you over. It's some shitty laws they helped write forcing them into a stupid position. So... don't just sit around and say we need to boycott them or some shit, push for the law to be changed.
No, it's not theft because the last two times (2005 and 2010) legislation to stop it came up, key Republicans (like Boehner) were paid off by the phone companies to keep it from coming to the floor.
Now, if it had been PELOSI who quashed the bills during the brief time the Democrats held the Congress, then the Republicans would be screaming bloody murder. But they'd rather this sit quietly under the rug and be forgotten about, because it's their "rape the consumer" agenda running as usual.
I have had some experience with this, and what happens is there will be a phone call made to the customer, may times a business, (the mark, as it were) and they will ask something like "do you not want your phone number listing to not be not removed from the universal listing service?" or some such bogus question, the person says something either yes or no.
The theiving company then makes a record that the mark company has agreed to have the service, since they actually made contact with them, then they do whatever procedure is needed to add the 3rd party charges to the bill.
There is no law that says 3rd party charges are illegal as long as the "customer" actually "agrees" to the charge. Sometimes there are even recordings of the conversation. A fast talking call center employee usually gets a low paid phone answerer at the company, and they don't know about the scams, don't know to say no to anything. Sometimes even saying "no" really means "yes, start charging me" because of how they word the question.
Many times the people paying the bill aren't the owner, and they only look at the final amount.
It is possible to remove the charges by calling the 3rd party company and saying the person who they talked to didn't have authority to make the agreement, and sometimes you can even get a refund of much of the money back to the start of the charges being on the bill.
The key thing to realize is that it IS legal, it is 99.99999% bogus, everyone knows it (except most of the customers, apparently) and they let it continue. I heard that a while back there was a large amount of fines laid out on these 3rd party companies, sort of a gesture by the powers that be. Yet it continues.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
No. The customers are doing squat. These scammers just go through the phonebook at and add monthly fees to peoples bills. My parents buisness had fight with AT&T for 3 months because of these scams. They would get a fee taken off and the scammers would just add it back on. They had to watch there bill each month and call AT&T every month to get the fees dropped.