FCC Advises to Carefully Review Phone Bills

Posted on 23. Jun, 2011 by Excel Riedel [archives]

Consumers Advised by FCC to Carefully Review Phone Bills for Unauthorized Charges

Recently the FCC has charged four telephone carriers with $11.7 million in fines for “cramming” which is the practice of charging mysterious fees on customer’s telephone bill without their authorization.  These charges are not clearly disclosed or conspicuously posted on the customer’s bill.  The FCC fined  Main Street Telephone, VoiceNet Telephone, Cheap2Dial Telephone  and Norristown Telephone who were placing unauthorized charges ranging from $1.99 to $19.99 on client’s telephone bills.  These unauthorized charges were for a variety of charges ranging from unauthorized but seemingly related services such as voicemail, to charges by non-carriers for unrelated products such as chat lines, diet plans and cosmetics. 

In addition to levying fines on these four providers, the FCC has also released an Enforcement Advisory on cramming.  This advisory encourages consumers to carefully review phone bills for unauthorized charges and emphasizes that all charges placed on phone bills must be authorized by the customer.

 So how to do you protect yourself against cramming? 

Telephone bills list summary information on the front page, for example monthly service charges, one time charges and credits, usage charges and tax charges all of which add up to the current month’s total due.  Often the only page reviewed, this allows unauthorized charges to be overlooked and thus paid month after month until an audit is performed.  The more important pages in a telephone bill follow the summary by providing detailed subsections listing the individual charges by telephone number and including a list of calls placed with the individual cost of each call. 

Consumers should review their telephone bill every month, paying special attention to the subsections listing the individual services provided and calls charged and if any unfamiliar or unusual charges appear, contact your telephone carrier to get an explanation and a bill adjustment if appropriate. 

Consumers can further protect themselves by double-checking that the current month’s total amount adds up to the same amount as the totals of all the subsections of your bill. 

Certain carriers have begun offering web access to your account which can further protect you against unauthorized charges.  These web access accounts may offer the ability to download call detail information into excel for better analysis of your bill.  Often, these accounts offer access to your call detail charges on a daily basis so any strange usage spikes can be directed to your telephone carrier’s attention for explanation and adjustment if appropriate.

Not to get too pitch-y, but Everglades Technologies provides our clients with a Hosted PBX service called VoIPStream, which provides as a standard service online access to your account. 

Consumers can download into excel a detail of calls broken down by telephone number.  This can be of great use to offices in which multiple companies reside, allowing each company to understand the charges they are responsible for.  Everglades also offers audits on unbilled call activity to assist companies in viewing any unusual spikes in calls.  This can also assist companies in which access to telephones may be available to the public to help review if any fraudulent calling is taking place. 

If your company is interested in transparent billing to assure you of protection against mysterious charges or is interested in real-time call detail reporting, you can view more information here or leave a comment below.

Posted on 23. Jun, 2011 by Excel Riedel[archives]