On Your Side
Ron Burley
Well, I’ll Be
Crammed
PHONY CHARGES IN YOUR PHONE
BILL? IT’S CALLED CRAMMING.
HERE’S HOW TO FIGHT BACK
RAFFAELLA MARTINELLI OF
Arlington Heights, Illinois, was surprised
to see a charge of $16.07 on her AT&T
telephone bill for music download-ing and answering services. When
she told AT&T she had never ordered
those, AT&T told her to contact
Enhanced Services Billing Inc.
(ESBI), the company that posted the
charge. ESBI, however, refused to
cancel it. The next month another
$16.07 appeared on her bill. That’s
when she wrote to me.
Mandated in the 1984 breakup of
Ma Bell, third-party
billing was intended
to minimize the number of phone bills—
local, long distance,
900 number—landing
in your mailbox.
Decades later, everything from ring tones
to charitable contributions to online-gambling debts may
show up on your bill,
funneled through
clearinghouses such
as ESBI. Your telephone number has
become a charge
account—but absent the security of
a password, PIN, or signature, as you
have with a credit or debit card.
The term for bogus charges stuffed
into a phone bill is cramming. ESBI’s
parent, BSG, has twice been sued for
the practice, paying $1.9 million in
a settlement with the Federal Trade
Commission in 2008. Lois Greisman,
After I intervened,
AT&T erased the
$32.14 on Raffaella
Martinelli’s account.
To Stop Cramming
There’s only one way to
prevent unauthorized
third-party charges on your
phone bill: ask your carrier
to block them all. These
numbers should help.
• AT&T 800-288-2747
• Comcast 800-266-2278
• Qwest 800-491-0118
• Verizon 800-837-4966
If you encounter any problems, drop me an e-mail at
OnYourSide@aarp.org.
Yet it bothers me that the average
cramming victim can’t count on
AT&T’s help. The company recently
decided to require independent
audits of billing practices used by outfits such as ESBI, but it has no plans
to verify third-party transactions
that appear on its bills, and probably
won’t unless compelled.
That could happen. Last fall the
FTC recommended five policy
changes that it said could eliminate
cramming—among them, a requirement that phone companies address
cramming complaints by consumers.
Until such regulations are approved, your best protection against
cramming is to request a “third-party
block” (see box at left). If you’re a
victim of cramming, file a complaint
with the FTC. Call 877-382-4357 or
go to ftccomplaintassistant.gov. ;
Ron Burley is author of Unscrewed: The
Consumer’s Guide to Getting What You
Paid For. Read a new On Your Side column
twice a month at aarp.org/money.
