Slammed and crammed [telecom]

Must be the season of the witch! In early February I received January bills, both from my local loop AT&T and from AT&T Consumer Services, with third party or calling card charges for calls from a Cayman Islands number to various phone numbers in NYC, some made with an AT&T calling card, issued in my name, and using my billing address, that I never requested, others as bill-to-third calls.

Latest bills now show those call charges have been reversed, but it took hours on the phone, through implacable IVR systems, advice to "call back during normal business hours", reports from my local loop AT&T that they have no business relationship with "Legacy AT&T", as they style AT&T Consumer Services, and other frustrations both too numerous to mention and too annoying to care to recall.

"Legacy AT&T" reports that a LD account was established with my billing credentials, back in the late '80s, to show AT&T as my Dial-1 carrier (when my Dial-1 carrier back then was, in fact, MCI), and that the LD calling card was first issued in the late '90s, linked to that LD account, at the request of a person with a woman's name (and unknown to me).

Late '80s? Late '90s? And not used until just late this past December, appearing first on a January bill? Sounds to me like a little clever account-creation and surreptitious back-dating, with the aim of selling someone in the Cayman Islands a cheap calling card in time for Christmas.

Is that "slamming"? "cramming"? just plain fraud on the part of some personnel in whatever organization AT&T has outsourced its billing operations to? ... other?

Anyway, both "Legacy" and local loop AT&Ts have now been requested to close whatever LD account and/or calling cards they show, respectively, as issued with my name/address/phone as billing data ... we'll see whether that marks an end to the story.

Cheers, -- tlvp

-- Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP

A letter to your State Attorney General, with a copy to the FTC, would take 10 minutes and 88 cents (44 cents each). Using their web based forms would be cheaper.

(I prefer letters. Oh, and for good measure, I cc my Congressman and Senators pointing out that many of these groups have had lots and lots of complaints, and it's about time the FTC, etc., got off their asses).

I got so burned out by all the bad stuff that went on with cramming, slamming, and worse, even with blocking, I gave up my LEC wireline service for a period of time.

I am back, because of the reliability and the 911 "anchor," but I have everything blocked, toll restriction (I pay for that), and no designated inter-LATA carrier. As I progressed through this I was confronted by uncooperative and/or unknowlegeable representatives. But, I persisted.

As I have said before, we have used Vonage for our outgoing toll line since its inception.

The AT$T wireline phone is for incoming calls and real 911.

I would think you retired troops from the pre-divest Bell System would be saddened by how crummy your former august companies have become.

I have to wonder about maintenance as the end-office switches and local loop gain ever more idle capacity.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 8, 2010

SCHUMER REVEALS: MYSTERY CHARGES ADDED TO NY'ERS CELL PHONE BILLS WITHOUT THEIR NOTIFICATION - COSTS COUNTLESS NY PHONE USERS HUNDREDS EVERY YEAR

Scam Called "Cramming"-- Bogus Charges for Calling Services NY'ers Never Signed Up For Added to Bills but Bills So Complex Most NY'ers Never Even Notice the Charges - Loophole in Phone Deregulation Allows Scammers to Add Charges No Questions Asked .... Schumer to Call for Federal Crackdown on "Cramming", Require Notification Before Any New Charges Are Added to a Phone Bill .... "Consumers and businesses are being swindled by cramming charges and it's time to put a stop to it," Schumer said. "Cramming is an annoying scam that is not only costing people thousands of dollars in bogus fees, but countless hours of valuable time trying to get those charges removed. ........ According to a recent FTC filing, cramming has become a significant area of increasing consumer complaint. The FTC received over 3,000 complaints over the last year regarding unauthorized charges on telephone bills, including landline, mobile wireless, and VoIP services. ----------- rest:

- so the FTC has received over 3,000 complaints. One Would Think that they'd actually, you know, do something useful.

My rec's:

a: any telco agreement to allow for third party billing _must_ include something like "if there's more than a one percent complaint rate, this agreement is dead".

b: the telco's _must_ agree to handle customer complaints directly and not tell customers they have to find that elusive third party.

c: fraud by these companies, and the telcos, should be treated as the theft and crime it is. Including criminal charges.

d: customer accounts should have a default setting of no third party billing allowed on them, with an option of allowing "just direct phone related" charges.

Oh, and let's not forget the complicity of the various gov't agencies in creating these charges in the first place. Such as the "Gore Tax" and lots and lots of other fees and "911 surchages" and all sorts of other taxes and non tax taxes...

The switches seem to be fine, I'm in and out of offices all the time, its the outside plant that is a mess and they really don't seem to be interested in fixing it since the plans are to replace a lot of it with fiber.

An update:

The woman at the AT&T executive office (a higher level customer service representative) thinks that it is possible for the "business international calling service" to have been ordered during account creation... but during account creation of an unrelated account. So if my telephone number were inadvertently entered, it could get added to my existing account. Normally the billing system requires use of phone number plus customer code to prevent such errors from occurring, but as the customer code isn't assigned during account creation but after the account is active, it's possible for such errors to occur.

You'd think the system would be able to prevent errors like that, like an attempt to bill to an active account when setting up a new account, but it seems not.

fwiw, I filed complaints about Network Connections USA discount directory assistance plan with both the attorney general of my state and FTC. The FCC, whose regulation requires telephone companies to bill on behalf of third party entities, even when fraud is likely, couldn't have been less interested in learning about their contribution to a type of fraud that simply didn't exist prior to this regulation.

My Member of Congress also got a letter, so I expect to see Section 202 of the vile Telecom Act revised any day now with consumer protection from cramming.

Any day now...

The FTC might be able to take some action against these companies, but FTC cannot prevent similar frauds from being falsely billed. That's on the FCC. But Section 202 of the Telecom Act seems not to have any consumer protection features whatsoever.

Apparently, legislation with weak or nonexistent consumer protection features is the fault of federal agencies, never Congress.

There are no agreements. By FCC regulation, the phone company is obliged to bill on behalf of the third party if it bills for a similar service or product of its own.

To submit the bill, the third party needs to know nothing about the phone company subscriber than the phone number. I don't even know if it needs to be the main billing phone number or any phone number associated with the account. The third party does not need to know the the customer code or the billing name or address.

What I'd like to find out: Is there a telephone industry billing clearlinghouse that these third party entities bill through? How do they know which phone company to submit charges through? If fraud is discovered, does the clearinghouse note this information?

If one phone company receives a signficant number of subscriber demands to reverse charges back to the third party, how does it let other phone companies know that fraud is likely occurring? Can the experiences of several phone companies with this third party be combined in order to detect fraud?

I wonder if phone companies could simply join with credit card companies. Seems similar, since little identifying information about the shopper is known than an account number. Don't credit card companies have a joint fraud bureau?

Well, the third party shouldn't be allowed to obtain billing information from the phone company if the charges are reversed back to it if fraud is likely.

What, you mean arresting and prosecuting the owner of the third party entity before he sets up another entity to commit fraud in a new name?

Yup.

Hehehe. I'd like to reverse those taxes and mandatory fees, too. But it might make John Levine's phone bill rise.

On Thursday, the charge for slamming was reversed. It took two phone calls, because the clerk to whom I reported the problem initially never took steps to bring the problem to the attention of the long distance billing group, and I had to go through executive appeals.

Yes, the explanation was something like you got. The previous subscriber to which my line was assigned had subscribed to business international calling services. When local line is disconnected, the long distance billing system is not notified automatically of the disconnect, so ceasing all billing for long distance recurring charges must be taken as a separate step.

As the recurring charge lived on, finally, it found a live account with the same phone number to which charges could be posted. I suppose I'm lucky that the system didn't attempt to saddle me with the recurring charge for all those months during which the number was disconnected. Long distance calling plans don't use the 3 digit customer code, so the system doesn't care about a billing code mismatch nor billing information mismatch.

The customer service representative at executive appeals said she'd put in a request to change the billing system to address this issue. She said she'd like the representative taking the order to disconnect the phone number to see a pop-up window reminding her to end all long distance recurring charges, if any are on the line. I said how about posting the disconnect information to the long distance billing system automatically?

What happened to you may in fact have been compounded of a long-standing error. Maybe the calling card was ordered legitimately in the late '90's, and maybe it was added to an account that remained open accidentally. So that's one mistake. Then, instead of closing that account upon discovery and opening a new account in the name of the woman who ordered the calling card, they simply added it to the open account. And who knows how many other subscribers were added to that open account over time, charges from them eventually landing on your bill.

It's entirely possible that at no point was there any fraud, just a billing system that seems to encourage posting bills to the wrong account.

So, did you fill in the form to request slamming protection and mail it in to them? Did you request cramming protection? One requires a form; the other can be done with a phone call. That should be enough to protect your bill from these kinds of errors in the future, not to mention actual fraud.

First, you're believing their story about the previous "owner" of that phone number signing up for those services. Why?

Second, if any other business, or if you and I.. tried sending out bills based on this premise, we'd find ourselves talking to Mr. District Attorney pretty quickly.

Let's say the AAA insurance group had a policy for John Doe whose car's license plate # was "abcdefg". And they auto-bill, so to speak, his credit card. John turns in his car and plates and the bills stop.

Two years later Jane Roe gets the same plate number. And she has her own policy with AAA. uddenly her card gets charged for a double policy.

Duh. Double duh.

Note: The comment after the elipsis concerned tlvp's bad billing experience extrapolated from the explanation about my situation. I have no direct knowledge of his experience and cannot believe any explanation given. I can only guess.

With regard to my situation, I'll believe the explanation.

Would we? Consumer fraud is a vast drain on our economy. Whatever prosecutors are doing about fraud in their jurisdiction, it's not nearly enough to stamp it out. All too few "businesses" that perpetrate it are caught, let alone prosecuted.