The SC column: Examine your phone bill to avoid cramming
If you missed Saturday’s Savvy Consumer column, it took a look at third-party billing and phone-bill cramming. Not familiar with cramming? Here’s a bit of the column:
According to the Federal Communications Commission, cramming is the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading or deceptive charges on your telephone bill. There’s nothing new to the scam, which exploded after federal regulators started encouraging what is known as third-party billing.
Ironically, Washington wanted to help consumers when it pushed third-party billing. The idea was that competition would flourish - and prices would drop accordingly - if local phone companies had to share space on their monthly statements with companies providing Internet service, voice mail and similar services.
Plenty of legitimate companies now bill customers via phone statements, but so do many scammers. Their MO is to keep the unauthorized, monthly fees low - usually less than $20 - with the hope that consumers never notice the charges. The bogus billing usually claims to be for voice mail, cell phone or Internet-related service; but some crammers have charged consumers for unwittingly participating in diet programs, sweepstakes and other services.
If your phone bill has been crammed, and you want to file a complaint, here are some links to get you started:
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I was crammed several times. The ATT person that helped me said that you would not believe what it does to older people. She said that once a relitive catches it that the older generation has paid hundreds of dollars. and that the phone company can only get back the last two months of cramming. She further said that several states have laws that a charge cannot be added to a phone bill unless the Phone company contacts the customer in question at the phone number that is being billed and get a o.k. to bill it. When I took this to my state reps. they did not seam to care. Fed, trade commission did not care. Matthew, maybe you can lead something on this and get the attention of the people that can change the law so we can be li8ke Texas or one of the other SMART states.