Bad enough the thieving telecoms are spying for the government.
"Unwanted phone charges raising consumer ire" by Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | March 30, 2010
There’s a name in the industry for what happened to Mike Cunningham: cramming.
And you know where you are getting crammed, right, consumer?
It refers to charges for unwanted services that are slipped into the jungle of numbers that can make phone bills virtually indecipherable.
According to the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates phone companies, cramming fees are often generated by third-party vendors for such services as upgraded voice mail, text messaging, or Web design....
You love your little gizmos so much, don't you, Amurka?
Cunningham said he now wants to drop Verizon Wireless, but can’t just yet. Instead of issuing him a $567 refund, the companies issued him a credit that can only be applied to his Verizon bills.
Keep the money, you greedy scum.
“It’s like salt in the wound,’’ he said. “I can’t leave. I’m a captive audience.’’
Only if you want to be.
********
Phone companies are allowed to bill customers for legitimate services offered by outside parties, but it’s a complicated setup.
Looting always is.
Such charges are often administered by third-party firms, such as ILD Teleservices, which are hired to process billing for the companies that provide add-on services like enhanced voice mail. Major phone carriers, including Verizon Wireless and AT&T, enter into contracts with those companies and billing agencies, which, in turn, pay the phone carriers a fee.
Neither Verizon Wireless nor AT&T would disclose how much it profits from such arrangements.
$ee what it always comes back to here in Amerika? Next stop court, right?
Both said they encourage customers to scrutinize their bills to make sure they are not being improperly charged for services.
WHY?
WHY SHOULD WE HAVE TO DO THAT?
Isn't BIZNESS HONEST in Ameri.... oh, right.
Shady promoters sometimes gain permission to sign people up for services by enticing them with fake contests or “free’’ long-distance calling plans.
That's when they hear the click and dial tone.
Government and industry efforts in the late 1990s to curb improper third-party billing have failed to stop it....
Because as soon as they started the campaign ca$h from the telecom$ dried up.
State workers reviewing complaints sometimes spent hours trying to resolve a single one.
Your tax dollars at work.
The case of Soren Jensen, a retired engineer who lives in Duxbury, is typical. Jensen said he spotted four charges of $9.99 apiece for text messages on his wife and son’s cellphone bills starting in 2008. There was a common thread: Jensen’s wife and son said they had both taken IQ tests online, entering their cellphone numbers to receive the results. He suspected they mistakenly signed up for text messaging in the process.
After reviewing the fine print on his bill and doing some online sleuthing, he found Verizon Wireless had an agreement with Solow, a computer gaming website that contacts players using a text message service that charges $9.99 per message.
Jensen said he called Verizon Wireless to complain, and the company agreed to remove one of the $9.99 charges.
“I just don’t get why Verizon doesn’t want to protect us, as the customer,’’ Jensen said. “Verizon should not allow this kind of stuff. It raises a lot of questions.’’
Not really, not in my mind. It i$ all about one thing.
Solow could not be reached for comment yesterday evening. Verizon Wireless said it could not comment on Jensen’s situation. Philip Santoro, a spokesman for Verizon Communications Inc., the parent company, said it provides third-party billing as a convenience to companies that may be too small to have their own billing departments.
Santoro said complaints about third-party billing are infrequent. But when consumers have concerns, he said, “We roll up our sleeves and if there’s something deceptive about them, we dump’’ the outside vendor.
Customers have the option of blocking third-party billing on their phone bills by contacting Verizon, he added.
WHY must WE have to CONTACT THEM for something WE DO NOT WANT?
AT&T, which also allows third-party billing, advises customers to direct their complaints to the company assessing the fee. Names of third-party vendors are disclosed on AT&T bills, the company said. “AT&T’s third-party billing contracts require service providers to address cramming complaints appropriately, including issuing credits if customers have been crammed,’’ an AT&T spokeswoman said in an e-mail....
The best idea? Get rid of the service altogether.
--more--"
Yeah, those charges can add up fast!
"Family, Verizon far apart over nearly $18,000 phone bill" by Megan Woolhouse, Globe Staff | April 30, 2010
DOVER — Bob and Mary St. Germain say they can’t believe it. Four years after their son, Bryan, used his cellphone to connect to the Internet, the couple is still trying to fight the bill: a nearly $18,000 tab from Verizon.
Bryan, now 26, thought his family’s plan included free data downloads. It didn’t, and in August 2006, the St. Germains’ phone bill ballooned to more than 100 times the normal amount....
The case highlights how confusing wireless plans can be and how any misstep can be costly for customers.
This in the greatest economy ever invented.
Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group in Washington, D.C., said cellphone contracts have become so bewildering that he fields at least one complaint a month from customers with sky-high bills looking for help.
Actually, no, I won't call you.
Meinrath said what outrages him is that many carriers offer unlimited data plans for about $30 a month and are “making money off that.’’
“So how is it that they were charging $12,000 a month?’’ he asked. “How is it conceivable that is not price gouging?’’
Kevin Brannelly, an official at the state Department of Public Utilities, tried to help the St. Germain family fight the bill because it did not seem right.
“Never in my 25 years here have I seen such stubborn and senseless resistance to what is obviously a mistake,’’ he wrote in an e-mail to St. Germain.
That's Bizness!
Telecommunications experts said it is difficult to know how much it actually costs Verizon to transmit data. Verizon and other wireless companies typically do not release that information.
It's probably pennies.
Srinivasan Keshav, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, said the problem is not the cost of the service, but whether the customer knows the cost. He said customers are making mistakes because they do not have the time to sort through pages of fine print to understand the terms and conditions of a plan....
Sick of being blamed for everything, customers -- even bizness lying to you?
I thought you were always right in AmeriKa.
That's what I was always told slaving away in the factories (or worse).
