What just happened? Whatever your feelings about past FCC decisions, there's no denying that his last move is friendly. The FCC yesterday adopted new rules to prevent "unscrupulous" telephone companies from placing unauthorized charges on your phone bill, a process they call "cramming". They have also banned the telephone companies from changing your preferred cellular provider without your consent.
If you have ever been troubled by unauthorized charges on your phone bill, you would not be alone.
Although these types of charges have been illegal for some time, the FCC has never had formal rules in place to prevent this from happening, so some companies are less than ethical. have fully benefited from the loophole.
That changes now, though.
On Thursday, the Commission adopted a new series of consumer protection measures aimed at preventing the telephone companies from "snapping" and "stuffing". These terms refer to a cellular service provider that changes your preferred phone company and places unauthorized charges on your phone bill, respectively.
The following excerpt from the FCC's full press release explains how some telephone companies perform these actions:
Unscrupulous telephone companies are targeting vulnerable Americans by disfiguring themselves on sales calls or by manufacturing a consumer's check to change service providers. Others will even ask consumers to answer questions about an unrelated call and splice the answers into the alleged audit. And some simply piling up charges on consumers' phone bills for the services they've never allowed
If you mostly stuck with major phone providers like AT & T and Verizon, it's unlikely that you've ever encountered the problems the FCC cites here.
However, there are certainly some phone companies looking to take advantage of customers who do not have a lot of choice regarding phone providers or who do not read the fine print of their subscriptions.
Although the FCC, under the direction of Ajit Pai, has made some controversial decisions in the past, it's good to see them enact additional protections for consumers.
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