FTC: T-Mobile knowingly added bogus charges to bills

[Ryou-kun]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/07/01/ftc-tmobile/11913151/

 

http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/07/ftc-alleges-t-mobile-crammed-bogus-charges-customers-phone-bills

 

http://www.theverge.com/2014/7/1/5861830/ftc-accuses-t-mobile-of-charging-its-customers-for-spam

 

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/ftc-mobile-made-millions-bogus-charges-24384571

 

Uh-Oh.

 

Update:

 

From @TheSLSAMG,

 

So, last Thursday, the United States Federal Trade Commitee issued a lawsuit against T-Mobile. What for, you ask?

 

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing T-Mobile for allegedly raking in "hundreds of millions of dollars" by adding bogus charges to its subscribers' phone bills.

In a complaint filed Tuesday with a U.S. District Court in Seattle, the FTC claimed that T-Mobile has been charging users for third-party services, such as ringtones, wallpapers, horoscopes and celebrity gossip reports, even when those services were not ordered or authorized by users.

According to the filing, T-Mobile has been including these unauthorized charges on users' bills -- a practice known as "cramming" -- since at least December 2013. The FTC alleged that the Bellevue, Wash.-based carrier had been burying these unauthorized charges in its phone bills, making it "nearly impossible" for customers to discover them.

 

Ouch. That is one tough pill to swallow... So, @TopWargamer, is he such a good guy after all? After all, a business is a businness, out to make money like it's competitors do. But it is more honest to charge more in the first place than to tack it on unknowingly.

 

It is also reported that this suit is unlikely to cause disruption in the SoftBank/Sprint acquisation of T-Mobile from Deutsche Telekom.

 

T-Mobile may have a harder time campaigning as a consumer-friendly alternative to AT&T while it confronts a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission accusing it of overbilling customers hundreds of millions of dollars for premium texting services that users never ordered. The investigation may lead to greater awareness of such fraudulent billing, but the lawsuit would likely not damage chances for T-Mobile and Sprint to negotiate with regulators on a merger of their companies.

 

Sprint is reported to be finalizing a deal to purchase T-Mobile that would leave current T-Mobile CEO John Legere as the head of the combined company in order to compete with their larger rivals AT&T and Verizon Wireless. The FTC lawsuit may lead to more scrutiny from regulators but not enough to damage chances of approval by the government, says Harold Feld, senior vice president at Public Knowledge, a consumer advocacy group.

“Complaints like this traditionally are not a serious obstacle to a merger, rather when you have a merger pending before the commission there is tremendous pressure to settle things before the merger goes through,” Feld says. “If there are arguments that there is a systemic problem [at T-Mobile] it may lead to some kind of merger condition.”

 

It seems they will have no issue brushing the whole thing off. As much as a company doing this is bullshit, this is far from the first time that this is happened, and it will not be the last. Why do we let this happen? We are powerless, but maybe we can muster up some strength to fight against this?

 

Sources: http://www.crn.com/n...phone-bills.htm ,http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/07/02/ftc-lawsuit-unlikely-to-derail-t-mobile-sprint-merger

[Nineshadow]

And what's happening to them?

[Assassin]

I was wondering. my bill is around 90 dollars a month but we have been getting bills around 120 dollars. I get 30 dollars in taxes and surcharges. That's a very high number for taxes. But looks like mine is a different issue.

[PillowSmoke]

How dare they.

[PillowSmoke]

I was wondering. my bill is around 90 dollars a month but we have been getting bills around 120 dollars. I get 30 dollars in taxes and surcharges. That's a very high number for taxes.

 

Same.

[Nineshadow]

I was wondering. my bill is around 90 dollars a month but we have been getting bills around 120 dollars. I get 30 dollars in taxes and surcharges. That's a very high number for taxes. But looks like mine is a different issue.

The VAT in EU...

Damn too.

[TopWargamer]

T-Mobile, you're so cool, why would you do this?

:c

[EChondo]

I keep records of my bills and I've never noticed this.

Odd...you would think people would notice unidentified charges and call T-Mobile and see what's up, that's what I would do.

[TheProfosist]

I keep records of my bills and I've never noticed this.

Odd...you would think people would notice unidentified charges and call T-Mobile and see what's up, that's what I would do.

Lots of people just pay stuff without looking or just dont want to deal with it.

[EChondo]

Lots of people just pay stuff without looking or just dont want to deal with it.

Yeah true, and I guess people who don't have "unlimited" plans get charge different amounts each month depending on usage.

I wonder if other carriers are doing this as well...

[VSG]

T-Mobile's response: http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/our-reaction-to-the-ftc-lawsuit.htm

[Ryou-kun]

T-Mobile's response: http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/our-reaction-to-the-ftc-lawsuit.htm

Nice but I think we should wait for other Tech people to find more information about it to confirm if they are telling the truth.

Don't get me wrong. I love T-Mobile. 

[Syntaxvgm]

Bet they'll get some fine, they'll pay it and move on. Then someone will file some class action lawsuit "on behalf of all affected customers". They will take a large percentage of the money, and the rest will be split among the customers. Expect to be getting a notice to receive your 5.23$ soon. 

Fucking lawyers. 

[JAKEBAB]

Wow what scum! This is scary and i hope he gets sued to shit!

[Ryou-kun]

bump. New Updates.

[TriBeard]

Yeah, they were one of, if not the first ones to get rid of those "premium" sms charges and such, which is what these were, and haven't charged for them for probably at least a year. If you were charged for them, all you had to do was call and get a refund. Now, they are actually proactively looking at peoples bills and refunding any of them that they find. I really don't know where the FTC got their information or what their source was, but it seems completely incorrect. 

[Darkman]

Wish we had better options for phone services in the US... Either Verizon... AT&T... and T-Mobile here.. Stuck using AT&T.

[kainobean]

i feel this case doesnt hold water. cuase t-mobile does this very nice thing where if you pay for things on an app store it gets billed to your tmobile account and i feel after reading some of these articals that its just a bunch of dumb people not realizing how the system works and that they probaly opted in to paying these charges that they are acusing they didnt. really people should pay more attention to what they click on wiht their phones. i could be wrong but thats just my impression of what is going on... im a tmobile user and dont have any of these issues i do see the occasional app purchase i make on my bill but i autherized it so im cool with it.

[Slick]

@Ryou-kun

 

Great thread man

[Vitalius]

@ryou-kin

 

Great thread man

*@Ryou-kun

[ThomasterXXL]

*@Ryou-kun

I wanted to make a Ryouken pun, but I decided to look it up first and realized it was Shoryuken.... For whatever reason I decided to mix up "Rising Dragon Fist" and "Bloodhound" .

 

But yeah, Telekom here in Germany are dickheads, too. Actually the rivals are pieces of shit, too...

I swear German telecom companies must be holding competitions over how much they can treat you like dirt before you leave.

Of course if you switch, it will result in you being cut off from the outside world for months, which can be a death sentence depending on your job.

People's lives were completely ruined by that. (My mother is a freelancer that has to be available 24/7 through phone and E-mail and lost a lot of good jobs that way)

PS: Telekom basically owns all the lines and is forced by law to allow other companies to rent those lines, but it purposely sabotages stuff and delays stuff to make matters even worse.

Of course they pretend that they had some accident and the like.