budone wrote:
The last message is not true at all. It is not a scam by VZW, ATT, or any other Cell provider.
As for those who get a Premium text charge, understand, MANY facebook questionaires we all receive from friends, that if we have our Moble number in our Profile, even if not visible to anyone, the terms of the questionaires states you are agreeing to premium text charges.
I have a friend whose daughter saw the FREE RINGTONE ad on TV, got her tone not seeing the small light gray terms that streamed across the screen. and was being charged $9.99/month for a subscription to Ringtones. it is simple to sign up unknowingly to these sites. These sites are the scam, not the cell providers.
Bull. Who else thinks they have the right to let third parties make charges against my account without first talking to me personally to authorize it? How would this fly on your credit card? Your savings account? No, they have rules in place to refund you when you've been -defrauded- that way.
Are you cool with your electric bill coming with an additional charge because someone used your home address on a website to sign you up for a premium electric service that contains nothing more than the electric service you're already paying for? How about when you're driving through McDonald's; are you fine if someone with your license plate tells the cashier you gave them the go ahead to charge their chicken nuggets on you? McDonald's can just charge you a premium chicken nuggets fee? How many analogies do I have to go through? Even if you signed this bloke's petition on your way to the drive-thru and didn't realize there was a premium chicken nugget fee clause, have you been any less defrauded? Are you ok with Mc D's allowing that crap to fly? If you were ok with that you'd have people lined up at every drivethru in America holding clipboards and trying to flag you down. They'd be holding Java and Flash-based signs saying "Sign here to win 1,000,000 Dollars!" "Sign here to get your free drive-thru tones!"
The Service Provider is at fault for allowing third parties to charge your account without getting your express authorization, by voice, personally. Who else would you accept that from and say it's not their fault?
I advise that all readers that have been impacted by this snake oil B.S. refuse the charges and complain to the FCC because the service provider is at fault here. I don't care how long the charges go on before you first notice them, you've been defrauded. Small fortunes are being made defrauding people through a system that has no safeguards and the Service Provider is complicit by not instituting a very very simple policy: don't charge the customer for any services you're not the one providing.
