Wireless carriers—typically known for being paragons of virtue and honesty—are under the microscope today, as the Federal Trade Commission alleges that T-Mobile was knowingly loading customers’ bills with “hundreds of millions” of dollars worth of fake charges from third-party accounts.
The process is called “cramming,” wherein third-party services (like flirting tips or celebrity gossip) get added to customer bills and then buried under jargon. While you generally have to opt in twice to such services, the FTC is accusing T-Mobile of “just buying phone numbers from random places and billing these consumers without any notice whatsoever,” according to FTC lawyer Brian Shull. For T-Mobile’s part, their CEO John Legere called the FTC’s complaint “unfounded and without merit” …