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Brendan Lynch
Guest
T-Mobile was supposed to be the ‘chosen one’ in terms of US carriers by saving consumers from the questionable charges handed down by Verizon and AT&T. Now, the Uncarrier is being charged by the Federal Trade Commission due to ‘bogus charges’ that have been appearing on some users’ bills.
The complaints seem to be based around a $9.99 premium messaging fee that has been charged to some customers’ bill each month. You’ll likely recognize this type of messaging as the flirting tips or couple matchup scams that you see advertised.
Charging those who are compelled to check out these services without realizing there is a monthly fee is one thing. However, the FTC complaint outlines situations where customers never authorized these types of charges to begin with.
It is claimed that T-Mobile ranked in 35 to 40 percent of its total revenue from monthly service bills via this type of messaging. That is a huge number is will likely not bode well for T-Mobile should that revenue stop. Even worse, T-Mobile could be require to pay back that money which could end up costing them millions.
T-mobile has responded to the complaint, saying:
We have seen the complaint filed today by the FTC and find it to be unfounded and without merit. In fact T-Mobile stopped billing for these Premium SMS services last year and launched a proactive program to provide full refunds for any customer that feels that they were charged for something they did not want. T-Mobile is fighting harder than any of the carriers to change the way the wireless industry operates and we are disappointed that the FTC has chosen to file this action against the most pro-consumer company in the industry rather than the real bad actors.
We will have to wait until the complaint develops further to find out who is being legitimate here, but this could certainly be a major blow to the company seeing as it was just starting to gain momentum in the US.
source: Federal Trade Commission
via: 9to5Google
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