TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Court Halts Alleged Web Site Billing Scheme

Re: Court Halts Alleged Web Site Billing Scheme

danny burstein (dannyb@panix.com)
Fri, 8 Sep 2006 19:50:37 UTC

In <telecom25.324.2@telecom-digest.org> Grant Gross, IDG
<idg@telecom-digest.org> writes:

[ snip of yet another phone bill scam operation ]

> Whether the customers agreed or not to be billed after the trial,
> their phone bills were often charged. When consumers called to dispute
> the charges, the operators told them they had "verification
> recordings" of an employee authorizing the charges.

It really is about time the telcos _stopped_ enabling (to use a polite
term) this garbage.

While there might (and that's a very iffy "might") be some equal
access issues preventing the telcos from ending all such third party
billing, they could, and should, _today_, not tomorrow, have the
follwoing clause in any such billing agreement:

" if more than X percent of customers complain
about these charges, all such billing courtesies
will be immediately frozen".

Yet they don't do this, even under pressure and after signing
stipulations with Attorneys General.

Maybe now that one of the more practical AGs (NYS's Spitzer) is likely
to become governor, we'll see some handcuffs brought out. That should
hopefully cut this down.

_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

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