
SCHWENKSVILLE, Pa., Feb. 22, 2008
Ringing Up Big Charges For "Free" Tones
Charges For Unordered, Unwanted Services Popping Up On Cell Phone Bills And They Can Be Tough To Stop
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Play CBS Video Video 'Cramming' Charges Raise Alarm Cell phone companies profit from third party companies who charge their customers for things like ring tones and jokes, then make it difficult for them to stop paying. Sharyl Attkisson reports.
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(CBS/iStockphoto)
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"What's wrong with the ringtones that come with the phone?" CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson asked teenager Kelsi Dolan.
"They're Beethoven!" Kelsi said.
So imagine Kelsi Dolan's excitement when she got a text message on her brand new phone.
"It said, 'you've qualified for a free ringtone,' and they sent it to me three times," Kelsi said. "So I asked my Mom if I could get it and she said 'no.' So I texted 'no' back."
But saying "no" wasn't enough. A charge for $19.99 showed up on her phone bill. When her mom tried to get it removed, her phone company told her it was a monthly subscription and it couldn't be stopped.
"I didn't even want a refund for the first month because I figured, 'okay, ya got me.'" Debbie Dolan, Kelsi's mother, said. "Fine I'll take the $20 hit. But when you're gonna keep doing it and you won't do anything to stop it?!"
It's called "cramming," Attkisson reports: Charges for services you didn't order and don't want that can be next to impossible to stop.
And it's not just happening to kids. Last year, the FCC ordered millions of dollars returned to angry cell phone customers who said they were scammed.
Rebecca Anderson did nothing more than search the Web for free ringtones. Then she, too, got hit by monthly charges.
"I did not agree to any charges. I did not download anything," Anderson said.
An innocuous-looking website run by a company called Ringaza. Peel away the layers of Ringaza and you find a man named Scott Richter, better known to some as "the King of Spam."
A few years ago, Richter was one of the biggest e-mail spammers in the world. He even paid a $7 million settlement over it. And now he's in the ringtone business. He didn't respond to our repeated interview requests.
But carriers like Ringaza owe some of their success to carriers like Verizon Wireless ... which agree to add the charges to your regular phone bill.
"If you believe that you've been charged in error or that you didn't subscribe, we'll credit that charge," said Verizon Wireless spokesman John Johnson.
Johnson says if you suspect fraud, all you have to do is call. But it's not always that easy.
"Verizon said that this was an outside carrier and they were not responsible for these charges," Anderson said.
And in Dolan's case: "They told me they wouldn't take it off and they couldn't stop it."
It turns out the big carriers are making money off the deal.Couric & Co.: First-person accounts of cell-phone overcharge ordeals.
"What is Verizon's share?" Attkisson asked Johnson. "What kind of cut do you get from these bills?"
"I don't have a percentage," Johnson said.
"Does 30 to 40 percent sound accurate?" she asked.
"It doesn't sound unreasonable, but again I don't know," Johnson said.
It looks to the customers like Verizon or other companies may not be very responsive because they're getting a cut of the action.
"Well, sometimes it looks that way and that really concerns us," Johnson said.
Since CBS News first began working on this story, Verizon decided to change its policy. Customers can now block those unwanted charges.
And Kelsi is still looking for the right ring tone ... one that's really free.
If you think you've been a victim of a cell phone scam:
According to the FCC, Consumers may submit a general complaint to the FCC at: fccinfo@fcc.gov. If someone has questions or needs assistance filing a complaint, Consumer and Mediation Specialists are available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. ET. Call Toll Free: 1-888-CALL-FCC (1-888-225-5322) voice, 1-888-TELL- FCC (1-888-835-5322) TTY.
Or check out the FCC's cell phone scam information page here.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Couric & Co.: First-person accounts of cell-phone overcharge ordeals.
Michelle Obama tells how her role as the First Lady has changed her perspective.





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See all 42 CommentsWell, I use bluetooth. Using different ringtones helps me identify who''''s calling without having to look at the caller-id. However, since you pay for ringtones, what happens when you change phones?
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Posted by Klingon69 at 02:26 PM : Feb 23
Big deal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I find when I answer a call, my caller generally identifies themselves, I do not need silly little noises to identify people.
You must be frantic when you receive a call from an unknown person.
Posted by RowdyTexan2 at 12:05 PM : Feb 23, 2008
Well, I use bluetooth. Using different ringtones helps me identify who''s calling without having to look at the caller-id. However, since you pay for ringtones, what happens when you change phones?
Posted by tuckerndfw at 11:21 AM : Feb 23, 2008
I worked in telemarketing (for about 3 months). One of our clients was AOL. We were supposed to call AOL customers and offer a 39.99 software package (special deal). Turns out, that everything in the package, Windows already gave you in 98.
Companies like Verizon are so honest, so concerned about being responsible corporate citizens, that OF COURSE they deserve retroactive legal immunity for their roles in handing over consumer voice and data information wholesale to the NSA without a court order...right?
I mean, with their sterling reputations, how could anyone believe that they''d EVER do anything that wasn''t on the "up and up"?
Many of these companies are not only unethical but out right theives.
Nice system huh?
Boycott the offenders, it''s simple, attack their source of revenue ''til they clean up their act, don''t be lulled into being a bunch of consumers, AND - read the small print before you sign up folks, all of it.
did you read the fine print?i was going to do it,but it reads per month,so i did not do it.
that is absolutely true--IF you think the definition of "works" is to take money from consumers and give it to the rich and corporations, while preventing the consumer from having any recourse. which is what the right wing nutballs do think.
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You can phone customer service every time you get an unsolicited spam message, and the cumulative shock to the customer response system will bring the practice to an immediate halt. Like gasoline boycotts, though, it takes more people than are usually willing to play.
An alternative, while you are on the line with the customer service rep, is to request texting disabled for your account. Make sure the customer rep notes the reason for your decision, so that when the corporate PowerPoint graph plunges at the end of next month, J.B. in the executive offices willask, "Wha'' happened?"
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If NetNanny and Cybersitter can market a good blacklist for perv websites that defeats even a teenage boy-guru-geek, CBS surely can manage its forum spammers. The spammers are paid by each post they make, and even more if that post links to a click-prospect on the counter.
More spammers are coming, the latest wave of nuisance from people like Richter. All of us wish spamlords many years in solitude-- forced to read his their own advertisements over and over and over again, while listening to the radio top 40 on an endless loop. Just as in real life!
But Richter or no Richter, CBS visitors are grateful for this news forum. What many do not realize, however, is we also help CBS pay its bills. CBS makes money from our gathering of heat, light and discussion, and the less trash on the CBS system, the more people will come. We participants move past advertising that otherwise might never be seen, and advertisers love it. They pay CBS well enough that no one is hurting-- except the readers.
The least CBS can do is take care of its little preserve of ideas, to keep it inviting for those who visit at CBS invitation. It costs more to recover former readers than to keep them.
PS: And while the CBS techs are at it, please fix the software glitch/setting that renders the input of a single apostrophe into two apostrophes. That is slackware!
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If NetNanny and Cybersitter can market a good blacklist for perv websites that defeats even a teenage boy-guru-geek, CBS surely can manage its forum spammers. The spammers are paid by each post they make, and even more if that post links to a click-prospect on the counter.
More spammers are coming, the latest wave of nuisance from people like Richter. All of us wish spamlords many years in solitude-- forced to read his their own advertisements over and over and over again, while listening to the radio top 40 on an endless loop. Just as in real life!
But Richter or no Richter, CBS visitors are grateful for this news forum. What many do not realize, however, is we also help CBS pay its bills. CBS makes money from our gathering of heat, light and discussion, and the less trash on the CBS system, the more people will come. We participants move past advertising that otherwise might never be seen, and advertisers love it. They pay CBS well enough that no one is hurting-- except the readers.
The least CBS can do is take care of its little preserve of ideas, to keep it inviting for those who visit at CBS invitation. It costs more to recover former readers than to keep them.
PS: And while the CBS techs are at it, please fix the software glitch/setting that renders the input of a single apostrophe into two apostrophes. That is slackware!
If you''re a cell phone company and have 1 million customers, and you send a bogus text message to each one of your customers every month that costs a dollar....how much extra profit did you just make that year if nobody disputes them?
Like I said....think about it.
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See all 42 Comments