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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.'"
Every time I turn around it seems like there's a new way to game the easy systems in place for every-day-modern-life. The credit game has no security -- it relies of trusting lots and lots of strangers with "secret numbers" and bits of information that, when used, is "you." The phone bills have no security either. And all the while, we see fraud over and over and over again with almost no punishment or pursuit of the perpetrators while the enablers of all of this persist in using the system because the benefits them are apparently outweighing the problems or them... not the problems for the customers, but for them... they don't care about the customers.
Honestly they need to default to all this crap being blocked and you have to call to enable it.
What, and miss out on $2B a year? Phone companies (like many other companies) know that many people are just too damned lazy to go over their bill every month. And of those who do check, there's a percentage who are too lazy to actually do anything about it. While it is absolutely wrong for them to do this, when did ethics ever win against profit?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
People need to publicall call companies DISHONEST when they do things like that.
They do. All the time!
Problem is it changes nothing. A few lucky people can live without a phone (or a credit card, or internet, or whatever competition-limited utility you want to talk about) but most have little choice but to bend over and take it.
The president of my ISP could come to my house and piss on my shoes .. and I'd probably keep my subscription. They are the only provider .. and I kinda need internet to live.
Thing is, if it's just a buck or two per month it's really not worth my time to wait on hold for an hour to get it fixed. Especially since I'll have to wait, get escalated, wait again, get denied and ask for a supervisor, wait again, and then maybe get my $2 back. I can find better ways to get that money in that time.
It is not theft because large corporations profit from it. At least that is the best explanation I can derive from observing the US justice system.