T-Mobile put lots of bogus charges on customers' bills, FTC alleges

[IDemo]

Source: Los Angeles Times

The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday accused T-Mobile of making hundreds of millions of dollars by charging mobile phone customers for "premium" SMS subscriptions that, in many cases, they never authorized.

T-Mobile received as much as 40% "of the total amount charged to consumers for subscriptions for content such as flirting tips, horoscope information or celebrity gossip that typically cost $9.99 per month," the FTC alleged in a news release. "T-Mobile in some cases continued to bill its customers for these services offered by scammers years after becoming aware of signs that the charges were fraudulent."

The FTC filed an official complaint Tuesday.

"Internal company documents show that T-Mobile had received a high number of consumer complaints at least as early as 2012," the FTC said. The complaint covers a time period starting in 2009.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-tmobile-ftc-bogus-charges-20140701-story.html

[C Moon]

1. This is going to be interesting.

[louis-t]

2. I know people who complained of this.

Nearly every month, they had to argue with T-Mobile. They would take the charge off, but you have to go through it nearly every month.

[BrotherIvan]

3. Is there a class action suit?

This should be a nice payout.

[ForgoTheConsequence]

4. A lot of people never check their bills.

I usually don't, it's debited automatically. Probably how they got away with this.

[Jacoby365]

5. So T-Mobile steals hundreds of millions of dollars

from it's customers. I want to know how many executives of the company are going to prison, and for how long.

If I am a sole proprietor of a business that accepts credit cards, and decide to charge bogus amounts to credit cards that belong to my customers, how many thousands of dollars do I have to steal before I'm going to prison? Probably not many.

[reddread]

6. crooked as snakes, thats only one of their angles.

they need to be destroyed.

[Mnemosyne]

7. They cancelled my daughter's service due to no service in her area, then proceeded to send her

bills for early termination of service, for the three lines she had, for the last 7 years. Bad as ATT...

[freshwest]

8. Please, someone do a piece on what Comcast is doing. They are the Barons of Bogus.