Cramming – I Never Heard of It Until Today

Our local news had a story on cramming because some residents have been affected by it. Cramming? I had no idea that something like this existed.

According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), cramming refers to unauthorized charges that may appear on your telephone bill. In a nutshell, a company gets your phone company to charge you for services that you did not use. It could be a one-time charge or recurring charges.

A few examples of cramming schemes:

1-800 numbers – You call for a free service and end up getting billed. The numbers you see on late at night come to mind (like the ones for psychic readings). You are supposed to get something for free, but instead they bill you.

Contest Entries – Someone has a contest and asks for your telephone number. They use that to bill you for services that you never received and there’s no prize. In the fine print on the entry form, you may be giving permission for the charges! I had no idea something like this could happen.

I admit, I don’t look at my telephone bill that closely. I scan it and toss it into the pile. The FTC recommends carefully reviewing your bill for fraudulent charges. If you happen to find something, try contacting your telephone company first via telephone and then following up with a letter. You should also consider contacting your Attorney General’s office.

For more information, including more cramming schemes, you can read the entire article at the FTC website. I’m never quite sure how much I can reprint here, so to be safe I’ll link to the article.

Posted by Tricia on August 21, 2007 at 10:11 PM in Saving Money | 8 Comments »
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Lynnae responded:
Posted: August 21st, 2007 at 10:50 pm
That happened to us one time. My husband got a telemarketer call and answered yes to just one of the many questions. We ended up with a $20 charge on our phone bill. It took 3 months to get it straightened out, but the charge was eventually dropped.

I became a loyal Qwest customer after that. Their customer service during that fiasco was excellent.
Kathryn responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 7:08 am
Wow! Thanks for the info. We had no idea to look out for such thing.

Question: When does life get “simple”, again? I put it in quotes because I wonder if it ever really was.
Starving Artist responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 8:38 am
What gets me are the miscellaneous 2-3 cent charges that arenâ€™t yours (I keep getting “media access charges”) but aren’t worth your time to fix. You know the company is getting a few million a month off those charges, but they don’t have any incentive to fix things.
Chris responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 11:07 am
This is why you should always scrutinize your bills. And also always immediately hang up on telemarketers! I just don’t bother speaking at all to them anymore. Being polite just makes the situation worse and you are forced to hang up on them anyway.
Jim ~ mydebtblog.com responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 11:28 am
This is the reason I still keep receiving paper statements so I can review them every month. When you check that box to have electronic statements, it might be forgotten about and you never check. On top of that they only keep those statements available for a period of time.

The practice of cramming should be illegal but very little has been done to prevent or stop it. The 800 toll free numbers should never be able to charge. Those 900 lines do have guidelines that let them make charges through your phone number as your account. Cell phones are involved with this too using text messages and viewing them can cost anywhere from 2-20 cents each. It will take some time until people get mad enough before serious class action lawsuits happen or laws come about.
Ms. M&P responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 4:46 pm
That’s amazing. Thanks for the post. I’m going to start looking at my phone bills much more carefully. I’m also going to talk to my friends who work in telecomm about this!
chosha responded:
Posted: August 22nd, 2007 at 7:32 pm
Just letting you know I tagged you as a thinking blogger. I’m not fussed if you do the meme or not, but just thought I’d let you know.
Cash Money Life - Personal Finance with a Salute to the Military » This Week in Review - My Favorite Personal Finance Posts responded:
Posted: August 25th, 2007 at 10:12 am
[...] Away Debt: Cramming – I Never Heard of It Until Today. This is another scam that people need to be aware of. Thanks for the head’s up, [...]