Re: Court Halts Alleged Web Site Billing Scheme

[ 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 snipped-for-privacy@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]