T-Mobile To Pay $90M For Unauthorized Charges On Customers' Bills 51
itwbennett writes T-Mobile US will pay at least $90 million to settle a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) suit that alleged it looked the other way while third parties charged T-Mobile subscribers for services they didn't want. The settlement is the second largest ever for so-called 'cramming,' following one that the FCC reached with AT&T in October. It came just two days after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Sprint for the same practice.
Re:And where is my money?? (Score:4, Informative)
The carrier must pay at least $67.5 million to fund a program to pay its customers back, plus $18 million to state governments participating in the settlement and a $4.5 million penalty paid to the U.S. Treasury. If consumers’ claims go higher, T-Mobile will have to pay them, with no upper limit. Consumers who believe they were wrongly charged will be able to apply for refunds at a website set up for the purpose. That site was not immediately available.
Re:And where is my money?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Consumers who believe they were wrongly charged will be able to apply for refunds at a website set up for the purpose.
So pretty much T-Mobile could have made hundreds of millions of dollars off of this, but they won't have to pay more than $67.5 million of it unless people realize they were being overcharged, and go to the trouble of applying for a refund. How many people will actually do that? Most people who were wrongfully charged probably don't even realize, especially when it's tucked in between the various ridiculous "fee" line items on the bill. And even if people do realize they are being wrongfully charged, and even if they do know where to go to apply for a refund, unless it's a significant amount most won't bother because either they'll "get around to it later" or figure the slim chance of actually collecting isn't worth their time and hassle.
There should have been a few more million added to hire a team of forensic accountants.
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Here in Australia, when a company acts fraudulently, they're pretty much forced to declare their misdeed to all their customers, and to go through all the necessary steps to make it right. For instance, when Coles got spanked for calling their bread fresh baked daily, and when it came out they were baking from partially baked and frozen, they had to put several notices on the wall behind their breads spelling out in great detail what they did wrong. Every detail including the placement, frequency, and wordi
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1. Think of a clever scam.
2. Scam your customers out of hundreds of millions.
3. Pay a few million to settle the charges with the government while not admitting any wrongdoing (cost of doing business).
4. Profit.
5. Rinse and repeat.
Re:And where is my money?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And where is my money?? (Score:5, Informative)
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I dealt with this several years ago. I found the charges on my bill and called to have them removed. It showed up the next month too. After speaking, at length, with the T-mobile rep it made sense. T-mobile allowed you to purchase apps through your account. But these companies would get your number and just start charging you. Apparently many people don't look at their bills and don't notice changes for a couple dollars. Particularly if the company name is worded to look like part of your bill. I asked them to disable being able to bill my account directly and the problem was solved.
I went through this several times with Verizon. I disabled all billing through my account, but apparently every time you get a new phone, change your rate plan, or a mouse farts, the option gets switched back on.
In many cases, such as my stepson's, they are aiming these services at kids, because they know they have trained well this generation of kids to not read the fine print. By texting "funny" to some number they can get a corny joke sent to their phone once a day and they don't even realize that it i
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You mean you didn't get your $1.99 credit voucher(void where prohibited by law. not valid with other promotions)? I'd sue if I were you
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More like $20, and that's for people who don't look up how much they were actually charged.
And cash, not a voucher. I'm a former T-Mobile customer, and they looked up my new contact information and got in touch to let me know that this was available (how to ask them to research my actual charges, vs how to accept the default amount).
A lot of these settlements are BS, but you might do a bit of homework for claiming that this is just more of the same.
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Eh, sometimes the magic works. Don't spend it all at once :-)
Nice! I was one of the ones hit by these charges! (Score:5, Informative)
The company - I would have to check my files for the name - said I had visited some web site and signed up for their celibrity quiz game. I had a static IP address at the time and sure as shit, they had it. I had apparently visited a site that was simply harvesting IP addresses, or somehow they associated my IP with my name. I would never sign up for some celebrity quiz. It was a simple slam.
Glad they all got nailed!
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I called my Senator and told his staff about it. They intervened and T-Mobile contacted me and gave me a full refund. The Senator's staff contacted me again and asked if I minded if my case data was used in their investigation and I told them not at all. Looks like it has all finally bore fruit.
I salute you sir for your efforts. May I kindly ask who your Senator was at the time?
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Thanks, Obama (Score:3, Informative)
Remember when the Republicans in Congress fought against the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? This is why.
The CFPB was actually proposed by Elizabeth Warren, then still at Harvard. She was Obama's first choice for its Director, but her appointment was blocked.
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The "T"'s have been doing this forever (Score:1)
T-Mobile's big mama, the Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) has been doing .. they got smarter about it and let third parties do the the fantasy
this for years in Germany. First they themselves invented charges to put
on people's bills until there was enough backlash and they got fined for it.
Then
billing.
I am so not surprised to see T-Mobile USA do the same thing. They must
figure what works in Germany works just as well in the USA.
What they the "Telekoms" need for them to stop this pattern of ripping people off (on t
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T-Mobile's big mama, the Deutsche Telekom AG (DTAG) has been doing
this for years in Germany.
Got a cite for that? I can't find anyone complaining about DT and slamming or inapprporiate charges on their account. If you do find such an example (assuming such an example exists), would you be so kind as to update Wikipedia?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Why not fine the 3rd party companies?? (Score:4, Interesting)
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this is why they call it a settlement, not a declaration of liability. By accepting the settlement you're agreeing to take no further action on the matter. They got you by the bollocks, and by accepting the twenty Dollar rebate you're accepting that, too.
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Fine!! It's criminal fraud, nothing civil about it, people should go to prison*
*for a short period in a non-pound-em-in-the-ass prison, US has too many people in prison, you all need to calm down with that.
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Even if the third parties were the ones doing the charging, T-Mobile was the enabler. From the fine article:
Finally! (Score:3)
A penalty that stands a chance of getting the offender's attention, rather than one that's considered simply a cost of doing business. The fine should have been higher though - perhaps an additional $90M as purely punitive damages. Companies need to learn that wilfully screwing over their customers really, really hurts their bottom line. Also, an award approaching a fifth of a billion would likely piss off enough shareholders that several heads would roll.
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You want a fine that will make them take notice? Fines for compan
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fight the system? No, they *own* the system.
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There will be ways to game the system. Look at Hollywood, for example: The reason you see films given as 'making $X on a budget of $Y' is that no film, no matter how successful, ever turns a profit on paper. No profit, nothing to tax.
AT&T Settled a Similar Lawsuit (Score:1)
And I haven't received my $250 yet. It's been a year. Good luck.
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You fucking idiot, at this point and time you're supposed to file a lien on their property.
That you haven't done so is a statement of your idiocy and ignorance of the law.
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cramming is the practice of adding small, often unnoticeable, unauthorised charges to a customer's bill. Such charges may be disguised as excess data charges, roaming connects, SMS picture messaging (which some smartphones use to upload pictures to Facebook rather than use data allowance and a web interface), freemium games...
Yes, it's a *form* of fraud, but not necessarily wire fraud which is a very specific type of fraud. Title 18 of the US Code, at section 1343 provides that:
"Whoever, having devised or i
From the perspective of the Sprint Lawsuit (Score:2)
I realize the story is specifically about T-Mobile, but overall it's about the "mysterious" charges that end up on peoples bills across all carriers.
I worked in Sprint's billing department (hell on earth, yes), and I dealt with these calls about 25% of my day. I was personally allotted $15 per call, that's per customer to refund these charges, explain how they got there, personally block them from happening again wherever possible, and then give a long lecture on how to prevent this sort of th
You can block all slamming in T-mobile (Score:2)
Third-party service provider billing Certain third-party charges (games, apps, ringtones, etc.) may be included on your T-Mobile bill. If you want to block those third-party charges from being included on your T-Mobile bill, you may do so at no charge by visiting www.my.T-Mobile.com or calling T-Mobile Customer Service.
I have used it and I have not seen any such slammed bills over a number of years. But one constant complaint I have is that, every time I go to Niagara Falls, (I am an Indian American, all my relatives and friends from India insist on visiting Niagara when they come here. I have gone there some 35 times, might qualify as a guide too ;-)), my T-mobile phone would connect to Rogers Wireless and they will bi
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T-mobile says here [t-mobile.com] it is possible for the customers to block ALL third party service provider billing.
I'm not sure about T-mobile, but Verizon has various flags which cause this to get turned back on, such as getting a new phone, signing a new contract, changing your rate plan, etc.