Cell Phone Scam
September 27th, 2009
Today I took a look at my ATT phone bill and noticed almost $60.00 in monthly mobile charges – MONTHLY charges that if not caught would continue to occur each and ever month.
Okay people what you need to do right now TODAY is to check your phone bill for these charges. In fact, better yet, pick up the phone and tell your phone company to search back three months and find these automated charges.
What are they? Get ready to get PO’d. You can now be charged for simply having a cell phone that companies that pull these scams can find. And everyones cell phone number is in full public view.
What are these charges? They are just charges from companies that sell you some stupid texting service that YOU DIDN’T OPT OUT OF. Yes, that’s what I said. You didn’t actually OPT OUT.
These companies can charge you a monthly fee just because they found your phone number and you didn’t say you didn’t want them to charge you.
I have received several text messages in the past few months that I ignored. They are stupid little texts that say stuff like, “The Earth is Round”. Or Tom Hanx is an actor.
Then, because you don’t specifically tell them not to charge you for texting them, they can bill you every month on your phone bill.
I can’t believe this is legal!!!!
PLEASE EMAIL EVERYONE you know and tell them to call the phone company to check their mobile phone charged.
I had 2 monthly ongoing services charges of $9.99 a month and one charge for $39.00 per month. I caught it this month and ATT went back three months to find they had charged me last month too.
You can call ATT or whomever you get billed from and tell them to block all charged from your phone. You will get a PIN number so you can specify which things you actually want, like a new ringtone etc…
However, you now will need to check each and every month because it will not totally block out everything. You can still be charged.
I am shocked that this is legal.
PLEASE EMAIL EVERYONE. I think everyone needs to call the phone companies and waste their time so that THEY step up to the plate and scream to get a law passed to get this crap stopped.
You can also have your phone number taken off the telemarketing list:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt107.shtm
It won’t block everything, but it helps.
The ATT rep told me he had just helped a lady removed $900.00 of her bill from 3 months of this activity. Why people don’t check their phone bills more often, I don’t know, but this should be illegal.
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I would call your phone service and request to get those charges reversed. You can say you did not approve the charges. The fact is you did not approve them because those charges were not clearly provided to you. Many times you can have your charges reversed. It is worth calling to check. Thanks for your helpful post.
This was a very interesting post. This happened to my wife. Luckily she was using a pay as you go phone. What happened is go involved in one of those commercials that tell you to text a 4 digit number into your phone and you will get a song for $4.95. Since the commercial was so fast she was not able to read the small text that mentioned she would be charge $12.95 a month plus the song fee that would automatically be sent to her on a weekly basis. The next week she realized all her money from her pay as you go account had been emptied out. That small fee turned into song fee, weekly fee, tax and some other fee she did not understand. She lost some money there, but it could have been a lot worst if she was on a regular plan. I am sure the bill would have been close to $100.00 for the month. As the post mentioned, be vigilant of your bill. You never know what could be charged to it.
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When I talked to the ATT man on the phone he said there is some legal loophole. I was thinking that the loophole is that ATT has to allow this type of activity and it must be in the fine print of our cell phone contracts to allow this type of hyjacking. What makes me incredible furious is that you must OPT-OUT in order to NOT get billed. You don’t have to approve of your credit card being billed because the bill comes from ATT. Which tells me that ATT has to be making a ton of money by allowing it.
That is why I encourage everyone to forward this information and tell all your family and friends to CALL ATT and whomever your cell phone service is to have them check as far back as they can check to see if you’ve been scammed out of your money with this bogus charges.
If enough people continue to call these companies EVERY month to tell them to check their bill, maybe they will start changing this Legal Loophole – which is total crap – and shut down this activity by making it so you have to OPT-IN in order to be billed for it.
I don’t believe people pay for this type of service, I think it is just a way for ATT and other phone companies to make money by allowing it because THEY CAN!
I can no longer be charged for this as I had ATT put a block on this type of billing. I now am supose to get a PIN ID number so I can order it but I have to enter my PIN number to get anything like Ringtones etc… I EVEN HAVE MY INTERENET access through my phone blocked! It was blocked before these charges, but they TEXT’d me these stupid things and then I’m automatically billed.
START PESTERING AND CALLING EVERY MONTH – OPT OUT, put a block on these charges. Eventually it will not be worth it for them to do this.
I wonder if these lists tie in with Facebook at all. I know I’ve received offers (for a free IPod, PSP, etc) and your entry was done via SMS. Once you looked at the fine print after entering, it would give you the legal mumbo jumbo about being charged $1 a day or $20 a month for some service, I didn’t want. So I’d opt out as soon as I saw it.
Do people honestly spend $20-30 a month to receive news and jokes on their phone?
Its ridiculous.
this is why i hate bills. in my country there is a choice you pay first e.g. $10 and use it till you spent the $10. Not just for phone but also for other things.