Cramming Phone Charges

First it was slamming, that is when your long distance company was changed with your consent. Now it’s cramming.

I'm Shirley Rooker for the Federal Trade Commission.

Cramming is when your phone bill is stuffed with charges for services that were never requested or used, such as voice mail, paging, 900 number calls, and pay-per-call 800 numbers.

While slamming continues to be a major headache for phone customers, cramming seems to be on the upsurge. Cramming can occur in several ways. You may have registered to win a prize without noticing that telephone services were a part of what you agreed to when you filled out the form. Or you may incur extra charges when you use a pay-per-call number. Or it could be the couch potato cram: you did absolutely nothing, but the con artist simply sent charges to the local telephone company without even contacting you.

Call the service provider; the number should be listed on your bill. If that isn’t successful, call you local phone company and report it to Call For Action. We’ll help.

I'm Shirley Rooker, director of WTOP radio's Call For Action for the Federal Trade Commission.

January 2002