Multi-million dollar settlement for AT&T. The number two telephone company in the United States has agreed to pay a $105 million fine to close the phantom bill case. The charge was of charging its users for unsolicited services such as ringtones or text messages with horoscopes, love advice and celebrity gossip.
This is the so-called "cramming", the ploy that allows companies to charge customers hidden costs or surcharges for services never subscribed to. The company will have to pay $80 million to the FCC to reimburse customers, $20 million in fines to states that participated in the investigation and $5 million to the US Treasury.
The mechanism was tested: external companies applied the "extras" to the ordinary rates and AT&T collected a 35% commission on the outlay. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the government agency that initiated the investigation, speaks of 20 million victims a year and bogus commissions that could cost up to $59 a month.
The trick continued until last January, when complaints from customers triggered investigations by the authorities. AT&T had received more than a million complaint phone calls and refund requests in 2011 alone for phantom bills commissioned by third parties.
A few months ago, T-Mobile, a subsidiary of the German Deutsche Telekom and the fourth operator in the United States, ended up under indictment for a similar case. The failure to reach a settlement has triggered a lawsuit by the Federal Trade Commission, the competition authority in the United States.
