Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
nytimes.com
Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
1–10 of 37 posts
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#2Thank you FluidDjango for posting this. You just saved me money.
After reading this article, I realized this just happened to me. I ignored the messages (From "Brain Cool IQ"), thinking that they were spam. Didn't bother reading them. Thankfully I had not yet deleted them.
The first message, on Mar 8, advertised the service. Then, on Mar 22, I received three messages in a row. The first advertising the service, the second welcoming me to the service and inviting me to cancel with a "STOP" message, and the third with some stupid fact.
In my case, the STOP message, which I sent just about 20 minutes ago, seems to have worked. I got a response claiming I was unsubscribed from messages and fees.
I never subscribed to anything in the first place. This is fraud, plain and simple. In my case, I ignored the first advertisement sent on the 8th. Had I actually subscribed to this service, they wouldn't need to advertise it first. Since their first round of messages on Mar. 8 didn't succeed, I imagine they got bolder and decided to subscribe me (and everyone else in that batch) without my having asked.
Since this was from a few days ago, I cannot check to see if anything was billed to my Verizon account yet. That would show up on the next invoice. I did change my account settings right away, blocking all Premium SMS message services.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#3After this happened to me, I managed to get Sprint to lock my account from having any SMS subscriptions added, since I'm not in the habit of signing up for them on purpose. It took some persistence and a transfer to a manager, but they eventually agreed. Might be worth trying.
I do think the mobile phone companies are at the very least turning a blind eye to it; some very basic vetting, like making sure the company has an actual address at which they can receive postal mail that doesn't bounce, or terminating services that generate too large a percentage of fraud complaints, could catch a large portion of the worst offenders.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#4It is unbelievable that this is not illegal.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#5In Russia they used to do that; later on the telcos were forced to require an explicit confirmation: a code would be sent to subscriber which they then has to willingly submit in order to subscribe.
And now half of the malware and shady websites would ask for your phone number and then trick you into telling them the confirmation code.
I think that such services should be illegal in the first place. That's the only way to protect subscribers. And they need to be protected: imagine it can be your granny who will end up paying tens of dollars monthly for nothing (I've got the impression they don't even send the SMSes you "subscribed" to, just charge the money)
I can't imagine a SMS subscription worth ten bucks monthly. Every one of them is a fraud.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#6It is unbelievable that this is not illegal.
Cramming is illegal but there are two reasons why enforcement is lax: First, as the article points out (and attempts, by inference, to get the carriers to convict themselves of), the billing carrier earns a cut, usually in the 20-30% range. Second, the individual amounts are usually quite small so it's not "worth" anyone's time to actually investigate unless that person is the subscriber who got dinged.
Simply shutting off third-party billing would kill off all kinds of pretty revenue streams that U.S. mobile and wireline carriers just love, such as purchasing apps from the Android and Windows Phone marketplaces without a credit card and "accidentally" (or intentionally, since they are somewhat popular) signing up for premium services via SMS.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#7It is unbelievable that this is not illegal.
Cramming is illegal but there are two reasons why enforcement is lax: First, as the article points out (and attempts, by inference, to get the carriers to convict themselves of), the billing carrier earns a cut, usually in the 20-30% range. Second, the individual amounts are usually quite small so it's not "worth" anyone's time to actually investigate unless that person is the subscriber who got dinged. Simply shutti…
You can separate legitimate payments from fraud.
It's not even hard. But surely they, earning a cut, don't even want that.
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#8I had no idea that these "services" could automatically add themselves to your wireless bill without an Opt-In. I just checked my family's account and indeed there were 2 different subscriptions on 2 different numbers. Thank you for posting this, as I have no idea how long they've been on there. Now I'm just waiting until 9:00AM CST to call ATT...
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#9I got one of those text messages in like early February.
I ignored it of course and deleted it.
On my most recent phone bill I noticed an increase of about $10.00
Sure enough. By ignoring the text message and deleting it I was signed up of an unwanted $9.99 per month program.
I called ATT.
The ATT rep told me she would cancel the service immediately. She confirmed that by ignoring the text message I had "agreed" to the charges.
I told her that I wanted the $9.99 refunded. She said ATT would ONLY refund the $9.99 if I agreed to put in place a block on ALL future 3rd party charges on the cell phone bill.
I told her I wanted the block on all four of my cell phone lines immediately.
And I got the $9.99 refunded.
Long story short: ATT allows this because they benefit from this extremely anti-customer behavior.
The service I got crammed with was:
02/29/2012 Saynow Alerts 58497 MT SayNow.com If you go to the www.mxtelecom.com it provides NO assistance what-so-ever.
According to the statement at www.saynow.com "SayNow has been acquired by Google, Inc. For media inquiries please contact press@google.com."
Re: Beware of Cramming on Your Cellphone Bill
#10I had no idea that these "services" could automatically add themselves to your wireless bill without an Opt-In. I just checked my family's account and indeed there were 2 different subscriptions on 2 different numbers. Thank you for posting this, as I have no idea how long they've been on there. Now I'm just waiting until 9:00AM CST to call ATT...
Please consider not just cancelling but instead ask for (demand) a refund in full of all charges going back to the very first month.
We have got to punish ATT for this gangster type behavior.