Phone Bill Woes

Broad Problem

Cole and McDonald are two of many cellular customers that shared withPC Worldnear-identical stories of recurring mystery fees on their bills, along with similar hassles in stopping the charges. The Better Business Bureau and multiple state attorneys general have received thousands of complaints about Blinko, many alleging similar mysterious charges and difficulty getting rid of them.

For example, Blinko is facing a class action lawsuit in Michigan over sending Verizon Wireless customers in that state "unwanted text messages and monthly charges." The Florida attorney general is investigating similar claims against Blinko, according to public records. Mobile game and ringtone provider M-Qube, a subsidiary of telecommunications and security services company VeriSign, faces a similar class action suit in Massachusetts. VeriSign declined to comment.

Verizon Wireless and AT&T (formerly Cingular) are also contending with customer lawsuits. The suits allege that customers were billed monthly without consent for a "Roadside Assistance" program for over two years (for more on these suits, read " Why We Love to Hate Our Cell Phone Company").

Merger mania has done much to improve wireless reliability, says Serge Matta, an analyst with ComScore Networks--but, he adds, it's made companies' billing systems worse. Merged companies have to cobble together the billing systems of the entities that are involved in the merger. The end result, Matta contends, is bungled bills.

The new AT&T, for example, is made up of Cingular, AT&T Wireless, BellSouth, SBC, Southwestern Bell, and Ameritech. "Merging those billing systems has been a nightmare for companies," Matta says.

Even companies that aren't dealing with a merger may have problems, since many systems are antiquated and weren't designed to cope with the many new products and services you can now purchase via a cell phone, says Elisabeth Rainge, director of telecom software research for IDC. The Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, a trade group, acknowledges that "there is work to be done" when it comes to billing for third-party services.

The CTIA is developing a system to monitor third-party services and root out the Bad apples, says Joe Farren, a spokesperson for the association; but Farren could give no time frame for the completion of this monitoring system.

Aggravation Watch

Other charges that have consumers fuming are the fees related to unwanted text messages or SMS (Short Message Service) messages. The problem has quickly come to a head for consumers as advertisers test the limits of mobile marketing with unsolicited messages that users are charged for. Depending on the cell plan, users pay either a set fee for each message that is sent or received, or a flat rate for a set number of messages. Worse, you typically cannot avoid unsolicited text messages unless you configure your service to block all SMS messages, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

Florida-based C & C Global Enterprises got hit with a lawsuit by Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan after it allegedly sent millions of unsolicited text messages to Illinois wireless phones last November. Madigan says its Consumer Protection Division has 256 complaints from consumers saying they received these unsolicited text messages from C & C Global. Messages sent to cell phones told users that "We have someone interested in buying or renting your Time Share" and directed them to log on to www.webuyresorts.com or www.resortsellers.com for more information (these URLs are not currently working). The Illinois lawsuit alleges that these messages violate the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the state Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act.

C & C did not reply to e-mail sent to an address listed under the company's domain name registration, and did not answer its phones.