3M AT&T Customers Sign Up For Cramming Refunds

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According to C|Net, not all AT&T customers seeking refunds on unwanted text messages will get all their money back because too many people have signed up already.

More than 3 million current and former customers have applied for refunds as part of a settlement with the Federal Trade Commission over fraudulent "cramming" charges on AT&T customer phone bills. Third parties had used the carrier's premium text-messaging service, which AT&T then charged to its customers.
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I never even heard about this. That sucks, i have had ATT for about 8years now lol
 
Why this is not criminal and people are not going to jail is just sad. Why is AT&T or any of the phone companies not responsible for paying back the customers 100%. They should have to pay for figuring this out and reimbursing every last customer. Not the FTC. Our government is a joke.
 
Hmm article says Tmobile, sprint and verizon have reached settlements too.

I do agree with the person who said there should be jail. I feel like a slap on the wrist is not really enough, but then those companies are now our infrastructure so we can't shut them down either. Maybe just arrest a few people in the company just to keep the fear lol
 
This has always been my issue with cases like this, the company should have to pay back everything they wrongfully charged, and then be fined on top of that.

To do otherwise creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law, for example, if I could rob a bank and my only punishment, when finally caught, was giving 25% of the money back I'd be robbing a dozen banks a day.
 
I never got any illegitimate texts while I was on AT&T, but the 25 cents per text was directly responsible for me dropping them as a carrier. What an amazing scam. I don't even see why they'd bother with illegal practices when the legal practices are so profitable.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
This has always been my issue with cases like this, the company should have to pay back everything they wrongfully charged, and then be fined on top of that.

To do otherwise creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law, for example, if I could rob a bank and my only punishment, when finally caught, was giving 25% of the money back I'd be robbing a dozen banks a day.
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I'm in favor of public executions for crimes like this. If you start executing executives publically I can guarantee that you see this shit stop immediately.
 
why isn't there a feature where only people in my device address book are permitted to send texts, and those not in the list simply cannot send texts to me (resulting in unwanted charges)?

why isn't there a feature where only people in my device address book are permitted to call me?

My Nokia Lumia 1020 has a blacklist function, but I also want a whitelist function. :|
 
canna said:
I'm in favor of public executions for crimes like this. If you start executing executives publically I can guarantee that you see this shit stop immediately.
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Let me realistic shall we?

Simply eliminate the profits of illegal actions is all that is needed. I mean now it's a slap on the wrist and they have to pay back a fraction of the money you made doing the illegal action, so why wouldn't someone do these things?
 
I'd like to buy an edit button for this section please!

The above should read "Let's be realistic shall we?"
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
This has always been my issue with cases like this, the company should have to pay back everything they wrongfully charged, and then be fined on top of that.

To do otherwise creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law, for example, if I could rob a bank and my only punishment, when finally caught, was giving 25% of the money back I'd be robbing a dozen banks a day.
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It creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law? Ha.. .it's always been like that, this is nothing new. Just like 4 major banks got recently slapped with a 2.5 billion dollar "settlement" for fixing the rate on dollars and Euros being traded. No one is going to prison, it's simply the company giving money over to the feds, and you can be damn sure they made more than 2.5 billion on the whole exchange considered it occurred over a period of 6 years.

While I like your idea of paying back all the ill gotten gains and then on top of that paying penalties I'd rather see a situation where the institution in question is not allowed to deal in that business for a fixed time period, just like any person who gets busted computer hacking might not be able to touch a computer for 10 years, or a sex offender is not allowed to work with children, make punishments matter.
 
sfsuphysics said:
It creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law? Ha.. .it's always been like that, this is nothing new. Just like 4 major banks got recently slapped with a 2.5 billion dollar "settlement" for fixing the rate on dollars and Euros being traded. No one is going to prison, it's simply the company giving money over to the feds, and you can be damn sure they made more than 2.5 billion on the whole exchange considered it occurred over a period of 6 years.

While I like your idea of paying back all the ill gotten gains and then on top of that paying penalties I'd rather see a situation where the institution in question is not allowed to deal in that business for a fixed time period, just like any person who gets busted computer hacking might not be able to touch a computer for 10 years, or a sex offender is not allowed to work with children, make punishments matter.
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Well, that case is a different then AT&T one as I am not sure there is a way to really know if, and how much, they benefited from their actions, where in AT&T case, every single of the charges were documented.

So your saying AT&T shouldn't be allowed to offer wireless phone service? Of Bank of America shouldn't be allowed to exchange currency?

One other interesting item, from what I read of what those banks did, it doesn't seem all that different then what the Federal Reserve does on a regular basis.
 
I definitely had this issue with AT&T/Cingular the I first time I had them. Sprint/Nextel wasn't an issue and my second go round with AT&T wasn't bad using the Apple/AT&T deal. However on the business side of things, both AT&T and Sprint corporate contracts were a nightmare to deal with, I literally had to review thousand page bills and file corrections. I actually wrote a program for finding the fraudulent charges in the bills. Getting them to actually correct the bills or mail a check back was almost full time job in itself for one of our accountants.
 
No, a Bank should not be able to do exchanges if they were caught fixing things, and doing illegal activities. That alone WOULD make them think twice before doing something like that again.

Sad how in the land of the free,the people get screwed and the book thrown at them while Big Companies get slaps on the wrist.
 
canna said:
I'm in favor of public executions for crimes like this. If you start executing executives publically I can guarantee that you see this shit stop immediately.
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They actually do this in China quite often. They simply execute the scapegoat either most responsible or most setup to take the blame, but the company replaces the employee, and everyone learns a lesson.

But the question is, does it work? Considering the epidemic of fake eggs, poisoned milk, and so forth, I would say NOPE!
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
So your saying AT&T shouldn't be allowed to offer wireless phone service? Of Bank of America shouldn't be allowed to exchange currency?
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Both, maybe not forever, but definitely for some non-zero period of time. These are multi-billion dollar a year companies, and oh hey we're going to screw over a little more because as you said it's more profitable to pay off the fines later than to pay by the rules today.

Doctors, lawyers, everyone who needs a license to do their "art" will often lose said license for some period of time if they maliciously commit a crime using their background, whether it's someone who does insider trading, or someone who sells cadavers to 3rd parties illegally. Get back all the money they made, and then stop them from doing their craft, which often will be more money lost than a fine.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
To do otherwise creates a situation where it's profitable to break the law, for example, if I could rob a bank and my only punishment, when finally caught, was giving 25% of the money back I'd be robbing a dozen banks a day.
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Seeing how running a high frequency trading company to spoof stock prices (breaking the law) or completely defrauding the country with fake mortgages (breaking the law) gets you off with either a little fine or a thumbs up, you are thinking too small.
 
travanx said:
Seeing how running a high frequency trading company to spoof stock prices (breaking the law) or completely defrauding the country with fake mortgages (breaking the law) gets you off with either a little fine or a thumbs up, you are thinking too small.
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Yeah, but you need an original nest egg to get to where you can get to where the real money is stolen.
 
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