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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.
There are two critical problems at work here in my opinion:
The first is that "free market will decide" tends not to work on stuff with huge barriers for entry and almost universally required. A few lucky people can say "screw credit cards, I'm only going to use cash" or can live without a phone ... but most don't have the option. They have to pick one provider from the available options, all of which mostly offer the same "bend over" treatment. You need legislation for this kind of stuff.
The next is that a huge number of users prefer convenience over all else. Personally I think it should be an absolute hassle to use my credit card. It should involve one time passwords, independent transaction authorization, various identity checks, passwords, etc. Most users would balk at this however... they want to hand their plastic over and be on with their day.
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.
Wrong. These are fraudulent charges and the phone companies - land and cellular - basically collude. I was slammed by "Celebrity Squares" and started getting text messages sent to my phone that were stupid quiz questions about celebrities. I thought it was just junk text messages and would delete them.
I finally got tired of it and looked them up online to find how to stop the annoyance. That's when a few of the Google hits were about fraudulent charges. I immediately checked my bill and sure enough - buried in a line that I had to expand twice were the charges from Celebrity Squares.
I called Celebrity Squares and they said I had specifically requested the "service". I have a static IP address and they gave me a date, time, and my IP address to say that I had signed up and I had not. My logs don't go back that far or I would have seen what website I gave my call phone number to because they were either corrupt or compromised. Regardless, this was a fraudulent charge and had been happening for a while.
I demanded all money back but they only refunded $30. I called my cell phone company, told them my story, complained about the fraudulent charges, and they also refunded $30. $160 had been taken from my account by Celebrity Squares.
I was fed up so contacted my Senator who took up the case and contacted the cell phone company about the charges, hiding the charges on my bill (I sent them screen grabs since I do online paperless billing), and allowing Celebrity Squares (and others) to add charges to people's bills without the customer's permission. The cell company refunded all of the money taken by Celebrity Squares and was going to back bill them for the amount.
My case was one of the ones presented as evidence during the Senate hearings this week. Companies like Celebrity Squares are dirty and the cell phone companies are more than happy to let them add charges because they get a cut. They make millions off of these scams. I can only guess how much money Celebrity Squares and others make.
If you get monthly stupid celebrity quiz questions, they got you too. Go check your bill and see how much you are being charged and you can see how much money you have had stolen.
This is a huge problem.
As an aside, the cell companies can lock out those kinds of charges but you have to opt out. By default you are opted in and third party companies can add charges to anyone's bill that hasn't said specifically to block them. One of the points I made to my Senator was that that needed to change. People should be opted out by default and have to choose to allow such charges.
Please post a reply if you got slammed by Celebrity Squares. And tell your Senators. Or if you got slammed by anyone. The more who come forward, the better chance of getting legislation passed that blocks these activities and if your evidence is good enough, we might be able to get prosecution for companies like Celebrity Squares.