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Mentor

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29 Messages

Saturday, January 21st, 2012 7:01 PM

At&t let a third party charge me $9.99 without my consent

I got a spam SMS from 31850 asking me to sign up for some quiz, I just ignored it, I've always heard not to reply 'STOP' to spamers because then they know your number is real and being spammers they don't care what you reply. I've seen messages on this board where people reply 'STOP' and it does no good.

 

Anyway, I just got my bill and AT&T let this "third party" (it's in quotes because they have to be in cahoots with at&t for this to happen) charge me $9.99 for their subscription. I don't have time to deal with it now but I'll probably have to take time out of my day monday call At&t.

 

I usually don't get upset over stuff but I can't believe that AT&T lets someone sign me up for a  $9.99 a month charge without consent, without a password or pin or an email or anything.

 

By the way, you are all now signed up for my subscription service.  Please read this sentence to confirm.

 

Contributor

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1 Message

12 years ago

I just got the corporate bill today, and 6 of our 40 lines were hit with a third party charge, $ 9.99 each, and all from different companies.  I went online, placed the charges in dispute, then called AT&T billing.  They refunded all of the charges, including taxes, and then offered to put block on all 40 lines to prevent it from happening again.

 

While the call took a while for all the lines to get blocked, it wasn't that bad.  AT&T should still evaluate the benefit of doing business with these scammers, if not for the customer satisfaction issues even the cost of tying up a rep with me for that long.

 

Just for fun, we did call the third-party, who claimed they "helped people manage their cellular phone service", but could not explain how to use their service.  The nice, if not frustrated, lady said that she could only take a message or cancel the service, not actually provide any service.  At least she has a job in this economy.

Tutor

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2 Messages

12 years ago

I don't get why a few of you are not comprehending that the OP got charged through no fault of his own. It's pretty common knowledge that you should just ignore spam messages but here, ignoring it got both him and me charged. My charges came from short code 25870 but it is basically the same thing. AT&T refunded my money but something needs to be done about these shady companies charging without permission. Not replying does not mean it's ok to charge me.

Expert

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12.2K Messages

12 years ago


@Killbomb wrote:

I don't get why a few of you are not comprehending that the OP got charged through no fault of his own. It's pretty common knowledge that you should just ignore spam messages but here, ignoring it got both him and me charged. My charges came from short code 25870 but it is basically the same thing. AT&T refunded my money but something needs to be done about these shady companies charging without permission. Not replying does not mean it's ok to charge me.


No, what you do not understand is that the majority of the 3rd party companies that engage in this practice embed their verbage for the end user authorizing it in many ways -- from "Get a free ringtone / music / wall paper" with a 2 page agreement before it downloads that someplace in it has "I understand by downloadig this rigntone I agree to a monthly subscription cost of XX.XX that will be billed through my carrier" statement - and it works becasue the majority of the population does not take the time to actually read what they are agreeing to. Or my personal favorite since my daughter got hit with it - a mobile survey on facebook that if you took it you agreed to a monhtly reoccuring subscription service.

 

As far as "not replying" it depends on how the 3rd party company words the agreement - properly worded in the correct terms it IS valid as a agreement, it happens all the time in some issues that send a email stating "If I wish to opt out of this I understand I must send in this document, if I do not send it in I agree to it".  No response is as valid as a response, it happens evey day in life.

Teacher

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10 Messages

12 years ago

This happened to my mother. She got the texts, ignored them, and started to get billed. In fact, the texts arrived while she was asleep.

She didn't sign up for anything (near as we can tell) and doesn't even have a facebook account.

Teacher

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10 Messages

12 years ago


@Killbomb wrote:

I don't get why a few of you are not comprehending that the OP got charged through no fault of his own. It's pretty common knowledge that you should just ignore spam messages but here, ignoring it got both him and me charged. My charges came from short code 25870 but it is basically the same thing. AT&T refunded my money but something needs to be done about these shady companies charging without permission. Not replying does not mean it's ok to charge me.


I get it. I agree with you.

 

You know what I'd like? I'd like ATT to show me the agreement they say they read in circumstances like this.

Teacher

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10 Messages

12 years ago


@wingrider01 wrote:

@Killbomb wrote:

I don't get why a few of you are not comprehending that the OP got charged through no fault of his own. It's pretty common knowledge that you should just ignore spam messages but here, ignoring it got both him and me charged. My charges came from short code 25870 but it is basically the same thing. AT&T refunded my money but something needs to be done about these shady companies charging without permission. Not replying does not mean it's ok to charge me.


No, what you do not understand is that the majority of the 3rd party companies that engage in this practice embed their verbage for the end user authorizing it in many ways -- from "Get a free ringtone / music / wall paper" with a 2 page agreement before it downloads that someplace in it has "I understand by downloadig this rigntone I agree to a monthly subscription cost of XX.XX that will be billed through my carrier" statement - and it works becasue the majority of the population does not take the time to actually read what they are agreeing to. Or my personal favorite since my daughter got hit with it - a mobile survey on facebook that if you took it you agreed to a monhtly reoccuring subscription service.

 

As far as "not replying" it depends on how the 3rd party company words the agreement - properly worded in the correct terms it IS valid as a agreement, it happens all the time in some issues that send a email stating "If I wish to opt out of this I understand I must send in this document, if I do not send it in I agree to it".  No response is as valid as a response, it happens evey day in life.


I called ATT customer support. They were able to (repeatedly) confirm what it is that we are witnessing:

 

Any third party can arbitrarily bill me (you) without any prior consent. Really. The response? "Because they are a third party, we at AT&T have no control over that. You need to contact the third party to dispute the charges." Yes, even in cases like we are decribing, where texts arrive with no prior associated action and where no response was given.

 

As wingroder01 stated, you can easily stop this from happening by calling customer support and getting the Purchase Blocker put on your line(s). It is free, and details about it and other controls can be found by looking up Smart Controls and/or Parental Controls on AT&T's site. (I'm not allowed to post HTML links here.)

 

I asked, and was told that AT&T makes no checks at all what agreements have been made between the user and the third parties in situations like this, contrary to what use wingrider01 is certain is the case. Even the rep that I spoke with at AT&T agreed that this was a pretty foolish policy and was equaly baffled as to why AT&T did it this way. (AT&T is not the only provider with this policy/practice. Near as I can tell, it is pretty standard across the industry. 

 

There are many ways in which this can happen. A great many examples are ones similar to the IQ test floating around Facebook and other sites. In these circumstances, the user via some level of carwelessness winds up agreeing to something that allows these bills to be put in place. I'd go so far, based on nothing but my unscientific observation, to say this is probably true in a majority of cases; just as wingrider01 stated.

 

However, I am also inclined to agree with the OP and others here that there are most certainly cases of the end user being an unwitting and unparticipatory victim. In other words, it is possible for the end-user to do nothing at all and get "slammed" with these charges on their bill, oustide of the end-users control. I think they are telling the truth, as I'm pretty sure that *I* am also being truthful. I've witnessed it first hand. And, as you can see above, my conversation with an on-duty rep of AT&T confirmed it.

Contributor

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1 Message

12 years ago

It happened to me too! It probably happened to most people. Why can't ATT clearly present " purchase blocker" as a free option not under parent control? Or even set it as default? I'm sure most people hate those unauthorized charges, or were unaware this until some of the charge is noticed. I'm sure ATT reps spend a lot of times deal with angry customers who found out those charges, I had to deal with it more than a couple of times with different accounts.

Contributor

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1 Message

12 years ago

jorn_k, yours was the best response in the thread. I encountered the same thing today in looking at my bill. Mine was a $9.99 charge for horoscopes. I got a spam text several days ago about this saying to reply STOP if I didn't want it. As someone else said, I ignore spam rather than use UNSUBSCRIBE and I did the same thing here. There was no user agreement for free ringtones or anything like that that others suggest I agreed to. There was simply a spam text that I ignored. I called AT&T and, to their credit, they immediately removed the charge.  When I asked how this could happen without my authorization, I got the same answer you did. My failure to text STOP in a reply was interpreted as my agreement to the charges. She said that unlike email spam you don't want to simply ignore text spam like this.

 

She suggested and I agreed to Parental Controls on my phone. I also had it added to my wife's phone. AT&T then sent emails with PIN codes for each phone that would allow a purchase over the phone. I've never made a purchase (on purpose) using the phone so I don't know how it works. The PIN issued isn't very convenient so I'm trying to find out how to change it which is how I ended up in this thread in the first place. Not having much luck so I guess it's another call to customer service.

Expert

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12.2K Messages

12 years ago


@gary11112 wrote:

jorn_k, yours was the best response in the thread. I encountered the same thing today in looking at my bill. Mine was a $9.99 charge for horoscopes. I got a spam text several days ago about this saying to reply STOP if I didn't want it. As someone else said, I ignore spam rather than use UNSUBSCRIBE and I did the same thing here. There was no user agreement for free ringtones or anything like that that others suggest I agreed to. There was simply a spam text that I ignored. I called AT&T and, to their credit, they immediately removed the charge.  When I asked how this could happen without my authorization, I got the same answer you did. My failure to text STOP in a reply was interpreted as my agreement to the charges. She said that unlike email spam you don't want to simply ignore text spam like this.

 

She suggested and I agreed to Parental Controls on my phone. I also had it added to my wife's phone. AT&T then sent emails with PIN codes for each phone that would allow a purchase over the phone. I've never made a purchase (on purpose) using the phone so I don't know how it works. The PIN issued isn't very convenient so I'm trying to find out how to change it which is how I ended up in this thread in the first place. Not having much luck so I guess it's another call to customer service.


You did agree to something in some way shape or form, the companies have been challenged and each time they have been able to supply documentation on the agreement - do a little search engine scanning.

 

 It can be something as simple as "by taking this survey / quiz you agree to a monthly charge to be submitted to your carrier"  or By downloading this ringtone you agree to a monthly subscription charge to be added to your phone bill"

 

A purchase block would have done the same thing that parental controls do also - it requries a PIN to authorize purchases

Tutor

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2 Messages

12 years ago

This is crap.  The DEFAULT should be the purchase blocker and then allow us to purchase with a password or somehting.  I would think this would be a more pro-active move on the part of AT&T and show that they actually cared about their customers, and didn't cater to the third-party billing.  It's not like they get something financially for this - OR DO THEY???

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