May 08, 2007

When you get your phone bill, you may want to take a close look at it.

I had a rude surprise last month when I got my phone bill. The first thing I noticed was inordinately high charges. “I know I didn’t make that many long-distance calls,” I thought to myself.

Wading through a sea of ambiguous charges and strange acronyms was confusing at best. I tried to find someone who could explain what a “Federal Universal Service Fee” was. It was $3.40. I wondered what it cost to make a call outside the universe.

Then I looked at the last page of the bill. It appeared to be charges from a separate long-distance company called USBI. I had never heard of them. As far as I knew, I had not signed up for a different long-distance carrier. There were two calls dated April 10 to Diego Garcia totaling $22.77. I called Hawaiian Tel to inform them that they must have made a mistake. Diego Garcia is a military base in the Indian Ocean.

The service representative with Hawaiian Tel informed me that there are two new telecom scams going on. Collectively, they sound like a mosh pit at a Nirvana concert. One is called “slamming,” the others is “cramming.”

Slamming
Most people choose a single long-distance company as their default service provider. If your local phone company gets an order from a long-distance provider to switch your default long-distance service to another company, it makes the switch and the new company becomes your default long distance provider.

Sometimes, this switch can occur without the customer's permission. This is called slamming. The customer won’t know a switch has taken place until they receive their bill. In December 1998, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted stringent rules designed to keep companies from switching a customer’s long-distance service without authorization. This has reduced the number of slamming cases, but has not completely eliminated the problem.

Cramming
Cramming is the placing of unauthorized or deceptive charges on a customer’s telephone bill. In addition to charging for local telephone service, providers bill their customers for telecom services provided by other companies. Cramming charges appear on your phone bill when one of these companies sends fraudulent billing data to your local telephone company. In turn, your local phone company bills you for these charges. This is what I found on my bill.

Cramming can come in many forms, and it’s often hard to detect unless you closely review your telephone bill. Signs of cramming include charges for services you did not request or authorize and charges that appear as service fees, service charges, membership charges or “other fees.”
 How to protect yourself

• Study your bill, especially if it seems too high. If you notice unusual charges, report them to your local phone   company immediately. Most times, your local carrier will reverse the charges and post a notice on your account that you have been the victim of one of the scams listed above.

• Don’t pay the charges if you don’t know what they are. Once your local company receives payment for these charges, they will assume that the changes made to your bill were authorized. This is very difficult to reverse once payment has been made.
 Hawaiian Tel immediately reversed the fraudulent charges that appeared on my bill. I have not had any further problems.

Oh, that “Universal Service Fee?” I found out that everyone has to pay that. Though it sounds like it has something to do with attempting to contact extraterrestrials, the FCC ruled that all carriers who provide telecommunications or cellular services to the public are required to contribute to the “Universal Service Fund.” It is used to provide discounted telecommunications to schools, libraries, and low-income customers.
That’s all fine and well. I just hope I don’t have another bill from outer space.

J.M. Buck