Comments on: Cramming – I Never Heard of It Until Today

By: Cash Money Life - Personal Finance with a Salute to the Military » This Week in Review - My Favorite Personal Finance Posts

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 14:12:56 +0000

[...] 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, [...]

By: chosha

chosha — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 23:32:09 +0000

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.

By: Ms. M&P

Ms. M&P — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:46:15 +0000

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!

By: Jim ~ mydebtblog.com

Jim ~ mydebtblog.com — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:28:28 +0000

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.

By: Chris

Chris — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:07:19 +0000

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.

By: Starving Artist

Starving Artist — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:38:25 +0000

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.

By: Kathryn

Kathryn — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:08:47 +0000

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.

By: Lynnae

Lynnae — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:50:22 +0000

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.