Many of us are paying a lot more attention to the details lately, and in an effort to reduce some of my expenses I modified my cell phone plan last month. Today I received an email that my bill was available online so I logged into my account, excited to see how much my bill (normally about $120 per month) had been lowered. When I clicked on the "view my bill" link, the new bill was over $129!!!!! My minutes were well within my plan, so, no, I had not gone over my minutes. So, why was my bill so high???
As I reviewed the details of the bill, something REALLY STOOD OUT....MONTHLY SUBSCRIPTIONS! A charge of $54.96 added to my bill.
HUH?????!!!!
|
|
Subscription Name |
Code |
Provider |
Renew |
Charge |
|
03/29/2009 |
Flycell Downloads |
69999 |
Flycell |
04/29/2009 |
19.99 |
|
04/12/2009 |
Mobile Messeng:40544#11712 |
n/a |
m-Qube Inc. |
05/12/2009 |
9.99 |
|
04/12/2009 |
Digital Content |
77888 |
PlayPhone Inc. |
05/12/2009 |
14.99 |
|
04/12/2009 |
Mobile Messeng:86455#4658 |
n/a |
m-Qube Inc. |
05/12/2009 |
9.99 |
The first thing I did was call my carrier, AT&T to ask about it. I told the representative that I'm seeing charges for things I never ordered, and the representative said they always send you a text message with their "offer". I admitted I had seen some advertising messages (which I'd never gotten before, to my knowledge) over the past few weeks, but I figured it was some sort of spam and deleted them.
GUESS WHAT FOLKS ...
If you do not PRO-ACTIVELY "REFUSE" THEIR OFFER
THEY ASSUME YOU'VE ACCEPTED IT!
.... AND THEY WILL BILL YOU ... MONTHLY!!!!
AT&T did tell me they would remove the charges, they've registered my "dispute", and they've placed a BLOCK on my account so this sort of thing won't happen again. He then sent me an email with a special "pin" number on it, so there was something I actually WANTED to purchase online, I'd simply add my 4 digit pin to "authorize" the purchase / subscription! He also told me that he gets 20-25 calls JUST LIKE MINE every day!!!! Many people, because they are tightening their belts with this enconomy, are just noticing these charges (because they just started WATCHING their bills), and discovered that they've been paying for these "services" for many months and didn't realize it! Thankfully, I'm not one of those! Something else though that I noticed was that there additional charges...small...amounting to just $5.22 total that were "data transfer" charges also having to do with those "subscriptions". AT&T kindly reversed those charges as well!
SO, NOW, WHAT'S IN YOUR CELL PHONE BILL!
UPDATE...
I just saw a post on one of the message boards:
"I participated in an IQ quiz on Facebook. In order to receive my score, I entered my cell phone number. I was unaware of signing up for this service. There was no phone number listed for the company on my bill and the AT&T service person was able to reverse it. She says that Qube is a partner company. I don't like their "sign-up" tactics."
I also took that Facebook quiz! And guess what...because of the way the results DID NOT appear on my Facebook page, I thought I did something wrong...so I retook it...3 times!!!! Seems to me THAT SAYS IT ALL about MY IQ!!!! ROTFLMAO!!!! Boy, do I feel ignorant now!!!
GUESS I NEED TO TWEET THIS, FACEBOOK THIS, LINKED-IN THIS, ETC.!!!!
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