“Although DDI and ETS submitted charges for thousands of AT&T customers, they never provided any directory assistance service”, the FCC said.
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AT and T fined over sham directory – United States phone company AT&T will pay $ 7.5 million to compensate customers improperly billed by crooks and drug dealers who were using a sham directory, said Monday the Federal Commission of Telecommunications America (FCC).
The cramming scam, underscoring a scheme to defraud telephone customers, was operated by two Cleveland-based businesses — Discount Directory, Inc. The drug companies billed customers for monthly directory assistance service on their AT&T landline bills, without providing the service. The information was passed to the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau in 2015. Besides that, AT&T is required to implement a new program for refunding customers victimized by unauthorized third-party charges, and the company must stop charging wireline phone customers for certain types of third-party products and services.
“A phone bill should not be a tool for drug traffickers, money launderers, and other unscrupulous third parties to fleece American consumers”, Travis LeBlanc, chief of the FCC’s enforcement bureau, said in a statement. The settlement will allow AT&T customers “charged for this sham service” to get their money back, he said.
Some AT&T customers could see refunds coming their way. AT&T is also being fined an additional $950,000 by the FCC.
This isn’t the first time AT&T has been hit with a fine by the FCC. (DDI) and Enhanced Telecommunications Services (ETS) falsely charged consumers for a service about as timely and useful as telegraph operation.
Such scams, known as “cramming”, pray on the increasingly complicated nature of phone bills. During the seizures, agents found financial documents related to the directory assistance scheme, which targeted thousands of telephone customers, majority small businesses.
The mobile company has signed a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cease billing on nearly all its third-party services and products immediately. AT&T must also revamp its process for refunding customers forced to pay bogus charges.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the placement of unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on subscribers’ telephone bills has become the norm for the big carriers in the US.
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The regulator said it has taken action against carriers for cramming and unauthorised switching in more than 30 cases in the last five years, levying penalties totalling $360 million.
