This one is news to me.
Apparently there’s a practice called “Cramming”. It’s where a carrier will charge customers for premium SMS services, even if the customer never used those services. Getting celebrity gossip, horoscopes, or any other subscription entertainment media via text often comes with additional charges.
Well now the FTC is investigating T-Mobile’s relationship with these kinds of SMS based services, as new evidence might show that T-Mobile continued to bill customers for years after being made aware that some of these charges might be fraud. Why would T-Mobile do this? They get a pretty hefty cut of that Premium SMS fee.
What’s most troubling is these charges are often contested by subscribers who notice, but the maximum refund rate in any given month only approached about 40%. Which means most months, over 60% of these fraudulent charges were uncontested. The FTC is alleging that the UnCarrier’s billing practices made it more difficult for consumers to discover these kinds of charges. Their complaint seeks to permanently ban T-Mo from this kind of practice, and to seek refunds for customers affected.