Phone Customers Pay $2B Yearly In Bogus Fees 220
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.'"
How is this not theft (Score:2)
How is this not theft, and why aren't people prosecuted for it using existing legislation?
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Re:How is this not theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How is this not theft (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Incorrect... If it had been Pelosi, she would be paid off by the phone companies, or otherwise given an offer she can't refuse. It is pointless to vilify an individual person or party. The authority itself is corrupt
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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.
From a business view it is a "victimless" problem. The Telephone company gets free money.. A $1 of a $3 fee is HUGE!! and they just charge the "service" back (less the fee,of course) when the customer actually protests.
The law that makes Credit Card companies pay attention is the $50 customer liability rule. They legally have to hold the charge immediately. The BIGGER difference is that the Credit Card company PAID somebody that money. So when people put illegal credit charges and run with the money they ow
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You do realize that we're talking about a anyone being able to provide a telco a phone number and say $10 please without the number's owner's permission nor awareness. You are right though, it's not theft, it's wire fraud.
Re:How is this not theft (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Why? Because a) they make so much freakin money they don't care b) hardly anyone calls c) they don't want to get "in trouble" by not providing "good customer service" because they are trying real hard to stay JUST on the legal side of the line. JUST.
I heard of a company that had been paying for "web host
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and this is exactly why I use an answering machine to screen my calls along with Caller ID. If I don't know the number, I let the machine answer it. If they don't leave a message, then it's not important to them.
$100 per year (Score:2)
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and this is exactly why I use an answering machine to screen my calls along with Caller ID. If I don't know the number, I let the machine answer it. If they don't leave a message, then it's not important to them.
They seem to prey on businesses, where they have to answer the phone, don't look to close at utility bills like the phone, and are present during the day.
This is totally "buyer be ware" but the interesting thing is TFA apparently says they've NEVER SEEN a legit 3rd party charge. Why does this continue if it is 100% abused? Just in case some day someone has a legit 3rd party charge? Can anyone point out a legit 3rd party charge?
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Exactly, about the only thing you can do when you get a call like that is stop them mid-sentence, politely say "no thank you", "goodbye" and then HANG UP. dont listen to the whole speech, don't say anything else.. Just "click... Booooo"
They prey on keeping you talking long enough to "trap" you. Don't give them a chance. You don't have to be rude or mean, just hang up.
Re:How is this not theft (Score:4, Informative)
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It Is Theft - And Fraud (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
That's All? (Score:3)
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What really pisses me off about this shit is it is preying on those weakest and least likely to understand they are getting ripped off...old folks. It is the grandma and grandpa out there with landlines, the little old lady that can't read her bill with her coke bottle glasses anyway whom they are screwing over.
Yup. Like the woman who paid $10/month for DECADES for one of those old black rotary phones? http://www.mergermonster.com/?m=2&s=111&id=106 [mergermonster.com]
You can stop them (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:You can stop them (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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Agreed. They need their corporations disolved for having violated their charters.
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Just nationalize them. The infrastructure is too important to be left to for-profit organizations. And for those of you who ask, "Well, do you want the [implied evil] guvmint running them?" Not really, but at least I have a modicum of control over that entity. I have none over the corporation. And, before you ask, "What are you, a socialist?" I didn't used to be, but the growing scourge of corpratism has sort of forced me into it.
Re:You can stop them (Score:5, Insightful)
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and when the charge is a single line item on a ~80 page phone bill even people who do review them miss them.. At work i had to put together a cheat sheet/lesson plan so that the book keeper could review our bill for correct charges. (what to look for where)..
it's crazy that they get away with this crap - but hey the government lets them because they pay the people who are in office.
its not a bribe - its business as usual.
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I call shenanigans. How many people get 80-page bills for their (home) land lines? My bill for a combined voice/data/television package (from the incumbent phone carrier) is about five pages long each month, and a lot of that is legally-required boilerplate notices and disclaimers. Half of the rest is formatting to make it easier to follow the content.
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you must not get detailed call logs - i get one line item per call both in and out..
make note that this problem does not apply to just "land lines" it applies to all phones .. they can do direct bills to a cell phone just as easy. (and yes my land line gets detailed call history in the bill.. it's amazing how many call/hangups there are during the day, and that bill is around 10 pages. (5 pages front and back)
by no means do they try to make it or format it to be easy to read for the average person.
No line items for unmetered services (Score:2)
you must not get detailed call logs - i get one line item per call both in and out
Where I live (United States), services that do not result in a charge do not produce a log item. On a land line, these include incoming calls (except collect calls), local calls, and calls to toll-free numbers.
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i too am in the US.. and AT&T has always sent me detailed call logs.
AT&T is a long distance company (Score:2)
Re:You can stop them (Score:4, Insightful)
when you have to have training to properly read your bill - there is a problem, and it isn't always the users in this case.
phone companies go out of their way to make the bill hard to read and understand, and to make bogus things look legit (at least in my experience)
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It really pays to review your bills every month. Very simple to do, and then you know what it should look like.
i agree it does pay off - but only because they love to try to pull fast ones on their customers
it is only simple to do After you have learned what all the parts of the bill mean - being able to identify and understand the different rate codes and calling codes and billing codes - which are not explained on the bill (yes there is a legend.. normally it is a 1-2 letter code that is then translated to an acronym which the average person doesn't know.)
yes once you have it cleaned up you can basically do an dif
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Same reason they don't prevent you from going over data caps. They _could_ just cut you off.. or send a notice, or warning, or something.. but why would it be in their interest to do so.
This probably requires legislation to happen.
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It's based on the "honestly" of the company. and people need to have the balls to call them out. People need to publicall call companies DISHONEST when they do things like that.
Re:You can stop them (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:You can stop them (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:You can stop them (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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.
What he said.
To which I would add: tell your phone company that you won't pay any bogus 3rd party charges currently (or ever appearing) on the bill. You're happy to pay their part, but the check won't include the stuff that was crammed on. They'll threaten you that your phone could get cut off, but they won't really do it. Why would they give up $50 bucks a month just to collect 3 dollars for some other guy?
I worked for a while with a 3rd party collect call operator. The company had billing agreements with lots of local carriers. But when push came to shove, the carriers would tell us to go do our own dirty work collecting from the unwilling. They wouldn't go the mat for us even for legitimate charges that the customer disputed. [Don't worry, all you contracts-are-sacred guys, our little company was free to send its own bill in that case -- having the telco collect it was just a convenience, not the exclusive means of collecting the debt.]
NB The above technique won't work if it's the telco itself that crammed the charges on -- or if they've got a big enough stake in it. If it's their money the will come after it.
Which They May Or May Not Do (Score:2)
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Honestly they need to default to all this crap being blocked and you have to call to enable it.
You may think that, but the average consumer would find that enraging.
The same laziness that leads people to not check their bills, causes people to get irate when they have to jump through extra hoops to get something activated.
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How about 100% uptime, 911 service, no dropped calls, no batteries, massively better sound quality, the ability to use a fax machine, and drastically lower monthly charges?
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How about 100% uptime, 911 service, no dropped calls, no batteries, massively better sound quality, the ability to use a fax machine, and drastically lower monthly charges?
Any major cell network will have 911 service, nearly 100% uptime (and even landlines don't have 100%), and few or no dropped calls if you get one that has good coverage in your area, which is kind of an obvious choice. Yeah, the sound quality might not be as good, but I'm not really using it to listen to the awesome hold music, and it's easily clear enough to understand the other person without any trouble. Couldn't care less about faxes. They can email me and I can receive it on my phone.
As for the char
Seniors are used to land line voice mail (Score:2)
Get rid of your landline.
If we ditch the land line, then what will those people in the household who lack their own cell phone use? You appear to answer that here:
In fact, my son and I both have a cell on a family plan for monthly charges less than what the landline cost.
But unlike a land line answering machine, a cell phone doesn't automatically turn on speakerphone when receiving voice mail so that the customer can pick up and answer the incoming call. Instead, the person being called has to wait for the caller to hang up, listen to the voice mail, and then make an outgoing call. This is a big change for a senior citizen who relies on a
We need a law to make fraud illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:We need a law to make fraud illegal? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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"free market will decide" tends not to work on stuff with huge barriers for entry and almost universally required. [...] You need legislation for this kind of stuff.
Unless it was legislation that created the "huge barriers for entry" in the first place.
The barrier to entry in CPUs (Score:2)
That is irrelevant to the point.
I disagree. There are two ways to reduce the harmful effects of monopoly: regulate the monopoly, or weaken the artificial property rights that create barriers to entry.
Prove that there is no barrier or entry in... lets say CPUs, and we can talk.
Even the barrier to entry in CPUs stems at least in part from government regulation. Patented instruction sets combined with a copyright structure that encourages hiding source code help keep the owners of specific widely used instruction sets (Intel and ARM) in power.
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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.
I'm completely for
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If the financial services industry taught us anything, it's that fraud is perfectly legal (and even rewarded) if it's large enough...
Landlines only? (Score:2)
What about mobiles?
My dad was hit with a bunch (3-4) of $10/mo charges for 'flirting tips' and other garbage. He has -no- idea how he got on them. We didn't catch them quickly, and T-Mobile would only refund the last 3-4 months worth. I think he got on them by putting his phone number into sites online. Specifically, online dating sites. (But possibly porn. Why did you have to tell me that, dad?)
We ended up blocking all SMS on his phone to prevent it from happening again. At least, we think that will
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just wait.. next time they send a usage policy and/or terms of usage update to you - call back you will find that your "blocks" have been removed and you will need to re add them.
at least that is what AT&T does.. and considering they are buying T-Mobile i would expect the same to be happening.
How are they mysterious and undetected?? (Score:2)
OK disclaimer first: I'm not American.
So I may be getting this totally wrong.
First of all: why are this "mystery" charges?
If you make an international call, you know you're doing it, and you know you'll be billed for it.
If you receive a collect call, you're given the option to accept or refuse it (this is something I've never used myself; my sister used it a few times calling my parents from abroad where she had to use public phones), and I basically can not imagine this service to be used much.
If they
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In my case, a $12.95 monthly charge just showed up on my phone bill (land line). There are so many odd items on the bill, it's hard to notice another one.
That amount is more than I pay for my two business fixed lines. Yes that's together. So that's a pretty big sum for a phone bill to appear.
Secondly, "so many odd charges"... you go through the bill once, and tick what you don't know what it is. And make a call to the phone company for explanation. That's what I do with my credit card bill. It's not that hard, it just requires you to care about your money. If you let such sums just stand, sorry to say, but you obviously don't care enough.
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In my case, a $12.95 monthly charge just showed up on my phone bill (land line). There are so many odd items on the bill, it's hard to notice another one.
That amount is more than I pay for my two business fixed lines. Yes that's together. So that's a pretty big sum for a phone bill to appear.
Secondly, "so many odd charges"... you go through the bill once, and tick what you don't know what it is. And make a call to the phone company for explanation. That's what I do with my credit card bill. It's not that hard, it just requires you to care about your money. If you let such sums just stand, sorry to say, but you obviously don't care enough.
sorry i don't know where you live - but around here the cheapest fixed POTS line is 31$ a month (local calling only).. and for something that is a frame based is >300$ a month for the local loop, cheapest monthly cell phone is ~35$ a month.. the bill in front of me is >80 pages long in a 5x8.5 size with ~8pt font on it.. it takes me ~2h to review that bill and i fully understand it.
flip over to your grandmother with her local loop line and long distance - maybe even dsl on that one bill it is still
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Here [imgur.com] is a British landline phone + ADSL bill (though the ADSL isn't explicitly mentioned, it's part of the "Max Unlimited Plus Free Weekend Part II" package). It's complete, apart from the page containing two lines saying payment will be taken from my account automatically on a particular day unless I tell them not to, before some other day. The whole thing was four sides of A4.
It's a little old, as I don't have a phone line any more. We didn't use the phone much, so the call detail isn't very long, but it'
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to be fair you said $12 not £12 which is (currently) ~$19.38
still that is damn cheap compared to lines here in the US.
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Re:How are they mysterious and undetected?? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people don't look at their bills at all. Why? Paperless billing. My bank, credit card company, utility company, mobile, internet, TV and phone company all want me to switch to paperless billing. A few credit cards actually gave you a credit for going paperless. I know from personal experience that when I get the email notice of a new statement, I peek at the dollar value. if it looks about right I rarely click through to the actual statement. I guarantee you a lot of people don't even go this far.
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I understand why you do what you do. I know approximately what each of my bills should be and if it is close to that I just glance over the itemized portion to make sure there isn't so
Re:How are they mysterious and undetected?? (Score:4, Interesting)
On top of paperless billing is "automatic payments" for your "convenience" (it's really for their convenience). So, mystery charges are added to a bill, you get an email with your itemized bill telling you "thank you for your payment" and good luck trying to get the company to refund that money.
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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
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FTFA:
"When third-party vendors are contacted they claim the charges were authorized by customers and they often say they have audio recordings of the customer giving the OK, Madigan said...However, when her office obtained audio recordings, the voices turned out not to belong to the consumers who were billed, she said. "
"Eppley said she called the third-party company and was told Eppley's company had OK'd the charges and there was an audio recording to back that up. Eppley asked to hear it but the company n
Re:How are they mysterious and undetected?? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) This whole article is in fact about the fact that it's a fraud. That's what makes them "mysterious" and "illegitimate": they're bills for services that were never provided.
2) A typical US phone bill that does not have any of these charges on it (so just a normal bill) has a dozen or more line items with names designed to be as obscure as possible. Not only that, but in many cases these change from month to month (both the total bill amount and the exact itemization). As a result, it's actually easy to miss a $1 charge that shouldn't be there unless you're _very_ carefully reading the bill every month. Which most people don't.
3) For reasons that are beyond me, many people have their phone bills set up to auto-pay (basically have the phone company just withdraw the money from the user's bank account). So in that case there is no cheque being written. The payment just happens; you get sent a bill (or an e-mail that you can look at the bill online, if the phone company's incessant attempts to get you to go paperless succeeded).
So the deck is stacked against people noticing the problem. If they _do_ notice it, they have to decide whether they want to spend several hours on the phone trying to get rid of the charge or just pay it and move on. I bet in many cases people do the latter.
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In a country that lets telcos CHARGE the receiver for receiving every SMS (solicited or not), anything's possible. Hell, sometimes they charge the person for receiving a phone call as well, even if it's an ordinary, domestic phone call and they never asked to be rung.
The US, collectively, are a bunch of people who do what corporations tell them to.
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Uh, solve the problem? Of Capitalism? (Score:2, Insightful)
"...It's time for us to take a new look at this problem and find a way to solve it once and for all."
Uh, you want to solve the problem of effective capitalism (a.k.a. greed and corruption) "once and for all"? Uhhh, yeah...good luck with that shit.
And asking Congress to step in? Congress should probably pick up a mirror first and wipe that kettle black off their face. I guarantee the average American is far more concerned with the trillions wasted by our Government and Congress than they are about an extra $10 on the phone bill.
Oh, and let's not forget about this. We're so focused on telcos and yet he
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Capitalism != Fraud.
Capitalism has to do with revenue being steered through the economy by voluntary transactions between buyers and sellers instead of forced revenue diversion by an authoritative body. You can still regulate what is lawful for a business to do under capitalism.
What happens when everyone decries capitalism and gives government control of the economy? We end up rewarding failure and funding every special interest and wasteful project politicians can dream up. Believe me, corruption is much easier to deal with in the private sector than in government.
What makes you think various governments aren't already in control of the economy? Please. And "voluntary transactions" vs. "forced revenue"? Two sides of the same coin, just depends on what side you're looking at. One persons (forced) taxes is another organizations (voluntary) revenue stream.
And I'm supposed to believe this? I've got one word for you on that shit.
Bailout.
'Nuff said.
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here we are, 20+ years later, and still cannot seem to order individual cable channels, and instead are forced (i.e. "crammed") into bundled packages and services.
Capitalism has to do with revenue being steered through the economy by voluntary transactions between buyers and sellers instead of forced revenue diversion by an authoritative body.
Cable companies and telcos operate on franchises, which constitute "forced revenue diversion by an authoritative body." Otherwise, the cable companies and telcos wouldn't be allowed to tear up the streets to install the last mile.
Separate the extra charges (Score:3)
But, but... (Score:2)
I was told free markets solve everything. That you don't need government regulation to police corporations because people will simply stop doing business with them if they don't get the service/product they want.
I can't imagine that corporations would put profit over customer service. This must be a mistake.
You can't even call to complain (Score:2)
Don't just hate the telcos (Score:5, Interesting)
But I suppose Comcast is, for all practical purposes, a telco too.
I buy broadband only from Comcast, and at a discount too from a reseller.
One month my bill doubled -- they started charging me for CableTV. Call them up, ask them why CableTV is on the bill. Wait for them to look up my records, then the lie that "someone at your address authorized the add on." I tell them "nope, I'm the only one at this address with the authority to do that, and I did not, so take it off, I'm not using it, I'm not paying for it." Next lie was "oh, we'll send someone out, you'll have to be at home for the service call." My response: "How did it get added without an installer coming out? You didn't need someone here to add it, you don't need anyone here to delete it."
My wife and kids are finally trained too. Verizon sales droid walking the neighborhood rings the doorbell when I'm not home, tries to sell my wife or kids, I forget who, on FIOS. Nope, they told the rep, you block port 80. The sales droid had no idea what that meant.
Scary quote (Score:2)
It's time for us to take a new look at this problem and find a way to solve it once and for all.
pbx hackings way worse (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"The admin password for your PBX was: 1111" and then he gets to go off an fire people.
And the new guy doesn't know the password so he doesn't change it either.
the other side (Score:2, Informative)
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 F
Direct Withdraw (Score:3)
I blame direct withdraw for people not noticing it. Verizon tagged an addition $6 on my first bill for not allowing them to take money directly from my account. It is in the fine print. Needless to say I told them to go fuck themselves and nix'd the account. Every bill I pay gets looked at while I write the check so I notice everything and have a solid paper trial of my own. Unfortunately, more corporations are pushing this. IMHO so they are protected from the pissed off customer that refuses to pay the extra month and mysterious extra charges on the last bill after telling them to fuck off.
Right (Score:2)
"Solve" It? (Score:5, Funny)
Ironically ... (Score:2)
Underscores what's wrong with business (Score:2)
There's far too much emphasis on rolling in fees as a source of revenue growth instead of raising prices to account for the needed revenue.
I'd like to see some kind of regulation that would prohibit adding fees to the cost of a service unless the fees represented a charge for a service that was optional and supplied and delivered by the same company providing the primary purchased service.
The only loophole would be if you agreed in writing, in an agreement seperate from any other service agreement, to allow
No wonder... (Score:2)
AT&T and Verizon is known as the "dividend king", paying out 5%+ annual yield (w.r.t. share price) to its investors. May be it is time to load up xD.
protection, I got protection (Score:2)
Congress needs to pass legislation to protect customers from unauthorized third-party charges
Congress NEEDS to get their shit together. I am of the opinion that America can no longer afford Congress' protection.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No rental fee for the phone, but AT&T still dings us $0.18 every month for touch tone.
Personally, I do not like any sort of wireless. Been looking at VoIP, but Internet is just not as reliable. So I hang on to the land line.
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Restricted websites = pay for access (paywall) websites, such as porn, technical forums, some newspaper websites, etc.
Re: (Score:3)
Besides responding to an obvious troll, I'd like to point out that I have a VoIP service (ATT U-Verse), and they do the exact same thing, adding about 10 stupid misc. "government" fees and "equipment surcharges" to the bill. It's just as incomprehensible and steeped in nonsense as the old land-line bills used to be, and the assholes manage to "bill creep" me up about $3-5 more and more every damn month, just like the old land-line. Progress? You tell me...
Re: (Score:2)
Those are "required" by the regulators though... Crooked, but that's how "adjustments" work when they go thru big bureaucracy.
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Those are "required" by the regulators though... Crooked, but that's how "adjustments" work when they go thru big bureaucracy.
Some of them are, but others are just things that the telecom companies add themselves, but call them something that sounds like it's a government-mandated fee. I've seen this from Sprint and Verizon both in the past. If you call and ask about them, they will usually tell you that it's a mandatory fee. I had to get escalated a couple of times to some higher level manager before I was able to find out that they weren't actually mandated by the government, but were, in fact, just additional charges added b
Re:Who, remember faux-capitalism (Score:2)
In America taking money for nothing is just good business practices that we all should emulate.
Faux-capitalist are legal, it all falls under "caveat emptor" [AKA: FuckUS Fees]
It is done with television dramatic-adds for fat-pills, miracle cures, cult-begging.... It is all good business practices, look at bank loans, credit cards....
Good FuckUS Fees are part of the new American business model that helps increase payroll and stock prices. Corporate welfare is a tax-payer FuckUS Fee of faux-capitalism, and i
Re: (Score:2)
Can you get anymore scummy than them?
ja, ja [opensecrets.org]
Cable Internet without cable TV? (Score:2)
My response to my parents was that they should drop AT&T and get a VoIP line. We switched to a Comcast business account for cable and to voipo for phone service.
But is switching from DSL + POTS to cable Internet + VoIP cost effective for families that have ditched cable TV in favor of $8/mo video on demand?