I have used Verizon for about a year and a half. Never had any problems out of them and I always paid my bill well before it was due. About two weeks ago I started getting spam text messages. They were pretty much complete junk. The only word that made sense was Gemini. Whatever that meant. I never replied to them or anything. I just deleted them.
So I look at my Verizon bill this month and it’s about $40 more than I expected. I looked and saw that I now have premium text messages sent to my phone.
Date Time Usage Type Description Min. Price Total
1/19 6:31P Premium TXT Messaging PREM_SMS 58560 Poly Ringtone Club subs -- 5.99 5.99
1/19 6:32P Premium TXT Messaging PREM_SMS 58560 Text Alerts - Jokes -- 9.99 9.99
1/26 12:33P Premium TXT Messaging PREM_SMS 58560 Poly Ringtone Club subs -- 5.99 5.99
2/02 12:40P Premium TXT Messaging PREM_SMS 58560 Poly Ringtone Club subs -- 5.99 5.99
2/09 12:47P Premium TXT Messaging PREM_SMS 58560 Poly Ringtone Club subs -- 5.99 5.99
What the heck? I don’t waste my money on that crap. So I call up Verizon fully expecting them to apologize and say they will remove the charges. Of course not! They have no control over what shows up on my monthly bill, they say. A third party is charging shit to my bill and Verizon has no control! I have to contact this company to get the charges removed. Basically Verizon says that they are charging us for you so you are responsible for getting them taken off.
Maybe I am not thinking about this rationally, but if I entered a contract with Verizon, how can they allow a third party access to my account to bill whatever the hell they want? Then they tell me that I have to convince them to tell Verizon to remove the charges? What if this company claims I did make these charges or I can’t even get a hold of them?
Their company website, http://www.mobilemessenger.us/, has no telephone contact and looks shady as hell. Their emails all end in .au so I assume they are in Australia (with some customer sites in CA). This just seems so bogus to me. What if someone had access to my credit card number and charged a bunch of junk online and my credit card company told me it was my responsibility to find the person who used it at the gas station or store? Personally I find it unacceptable.
If this company never contacts me or claims I did ask for these services, then I have to pay. If I don’t, then it will surely show up on my credit. You can damned well bet that I will switch providers too!
Oh, and for the record, no one has had access to my phone but me. I am 100% positive that I didn’t accidentally sign up for this.
As I work for TMobile and have to deal with those kinds of charges every day, I just would like to take this opportunity to say that all of those third party vendors are a bunch of scum sucking, cum guzzling, arse fucking, thalidomide armed shitweasel bucketfuckers covered in oozing, pus-filled chancres. And I really dislike them quite a lot. Have you seen the neat little Google ad at the bottom of some of our pages that invites you to “spell out the exact name of YOUR TRUE SOUL MATE!!?” If you go to this site, at the very bottom of the page, in very tiny letters, in an unreadable font, in the same color but one shade darker than the rest of the page, under the giant flashy “TRY THIS, IT IS FUN FUN FUN!!!” banner an agreement that you will allow this company to charge your cell phone account some ungodsly amount of money each and every month in addition to the texting charges they’re gonna stick up your ass for every stupid message about YOUR SOUL MATE they send to your phone. Which they will do every five seconds for the rest of your life, or until you text them back with nothing other than the word “STOP.”
At the end of the month, you and millions of others like you who want to find out who your soul mate is will be calling your wireless provider screaming like a raped ape about the fifty bazillion ducats in charges that you “never agreed to.” Now in some cases, you will be absolutely right, because it is also possible that some putative friend of yours will have given YOUR number to one of these sites in order to get a shitty polyphonic version of “My Humps” sent as a ringtone to HIS phone. Or maybe one of your kids saw a neat little ad on TV that screams out “FREE RINGTONES AND JOKES AND WALLPAPERS AND CRUNCHY FROGS AND ENDLESS HAPPINESS, FREE, FREE, FREE!!! TEXT “FUCK ME” TO SHORT CODE 666 FOR FREE FREEE FREE FREE FREE FREE FREE FABULOUS STUFF THAT’S FREE!!!” and somehow he managed to miss the type that appeared at the bottom of the screen for 1.5 picoseconds that reads “You hereby agree to a charge of $1,000/month for a million years, for which we will give you five ringtone or wallpaper credits to spend as you will, and a purple jelly dildo to put up your ass to keep it wide open for us!” and now you’re fucked, mate.
Wireless companies sign up for this crap because millions of idiots will fall for it and never notice the .99 charges for months on end and the company gets a slice of the pie. However, Verizon can reverse the charges AND blacklist the providers from sending you more crap, which is the good news. The bad news is you have to freak out all over the rep until they do it. Me, whenever I get these calls I just credit the fucking charges immediately because it ain’t worth losing a $55.00/month ARPU customer just to get the two cents that’s our cut of the charge for the FREE FREE FREE FREE CRAZY FROG RINGTONE WALLPAPER JOKE OF THE DAY HOROSCOPE LOVE MATCH.
Did I mention the vague dislike I have for these companies? No? I must be remiss today… :rolleyes:
I should have said they increase your bill by 80% for services you didn’t use or want. (Not just a normal increase where you can choose whether the new services are worth it or not) And you have no choice but to pay because Verizon is notorious for putting things on your credit if you don’t pay.
Where are you from? I am talking about a cell phone. If I don’t pay, Verizon screws up my credit for not paying “my” bill by putting this negative on my credit report. What is this talk of WIFI and DNS and IP?
Okay, maybe I am sense. Or it’s just early in the morning, but what does any of the stuff you are talking about have to do with Verizon cell phone service?
Oh, and I have to go to work so I won’t be able to reply until later this evening.
For premium text messages you get charged not only for sending, but also to receive receive. Check the fine print on the ads - “$6 per message pair”, “9.95 per message pair”
Is it possible to port your number to a different carrier? If you did, would it be possible to choose the cheapest plan they have with absolutely positively no texting/ text capable phone service? Then, if you still want Verizon, after you have been with wireless carrier “B” the minimum period, port back. (Ostensibly, to a Verizon phone that can’t recieve text messages.)
I know, I know, I’m a bitch too. Sorry. I’ll go get some coffee and leave you alone…
There’s your answer. Verizon CAN reverse those charges, and you just have to be persistent, tell them not only are you willing to leave them and pay for early termination, but you have posted this on a cell-phone users message board and will recommend to all that this is a reason to NOT sign up with Verizon.
What the fuck are you smoking? You’ve been shitting all over the pit with your incoherent ramblings. The only thought you seem capable of articulating is “shit happens, deal with it”. It’s just a matter of time before someone pits you but in the mean time why don’t you go take a nap and fuck off.
That’s exactly what I am going to try. I am going to call this evening, giving the company that is charging me 24 hours to respond to my email, and then ask to speak with the most senior person at Verizon when I call. Technically I won’t have an early termination fee since my contract was up several months ago and I just pay by the month now. The only thing that would keep me at Verizon is the fact that all of my friends use Verizon so I can use the “In” unlimited minutes to keep my bill a lot cheaper. If they end up making me pay for this, I don’t care how much I pay to someone else. I won’t give Verizon any more money.
Hey troll, what the fuck is wrong with you? He’s talking about CELL PHONE service, you’re talking about, what, jacking someone’s wifi bandwidth? Go shit outside with the rest of the dogs and stay out of threads where you have no fucking clue of what’s going on.
:mad: 