Jay, you should report the companies charging you the money, including AT&T as well as All Mobile Alerts (whom I suspect was the culprit as they did the same thing to me). This is a fraud they are perpetuating on Maryland consumers and it needs to be stopped.

Charlie: Thanks for the suggestion. Yes, I intend to report this to the Maryland attorney general anyway. JH

Sorry, but I agree with the phone company: you should look at your bill MONTHLY! I cannot believe people--especially a journalist--just mindlessly pay their bills with their credit cards and never actually look at the bill, EVER. YOU could have stopped these charges long ago if you had looked at your bill on time.

PLUS, since you have kids on your line, I don't doubt for a minute that the kids probably did order it, aren't fessing up to it, and now the cell company (ie, the other cell users) will now pay to eat that cost for you. Too many stories lately about teens texting and ordering things costing thousands of dollars in cell phone charges.

This should not be a blog about how to get the phone company to refund your money, but why people should read their bills every month! It should also be a lesson on not assuming and not trusting companies to bill you correctly. THAT'S HOW CREDIT CARD THIEVES OPERATE -- they trust that people don't/won't look at their monthly bill, that people will just keep on paying the minimum due and not notice the extra charges.

Shame on you, Jay, you should know better considering your profession.

Sorry Knd01 -- your argument against Hancock might have held water IF he had actually gotten the horoscopes etc. Hancock says he didnt even get what he "allegedly" paid for. And then AT&T wants to kindly allow him to pay just half-price for something he didn't even receive.

Clearly, even if a small portion of people accept paying for a service that they had not ordered or even received, it is profitable for companies to offer half-off as an alleged goodwill gesture.

People should check their bill, granted. But companies should also stop profiteering.

knd01

Are you saying we can't trust companies to bill properly?

Sure, in theory people should check every single bill they receive every single month. Who the hell has time for that? Companies should be playing a fair game, plain and simple.

Why can't companies email you to say, "did you request this service?" Better yet call you to ask if you signed up for the service. It is called customer service and retention.

personally I think stocks and flogging should be reinstated . . .

the real problem is with the phone companies..although they bill you, they dont want to take rsponsibility for the event/action if its fraudulent or if any dispute arises. my argument has always been "are you a phone company or a billing company"..if you are a phone company, nothing else belongs on my phone bill..if you are a billing company, then you need to take resposibility for what you bill..unfortunately, revenue generation clouds their focus..glad you got it straight for them!

Robert: my argument does hold water. The point is to check your own bills, every bill, every charge and don't be blindly stupid. Furthermore, the company being maligned is AT&T, but how about the company/third-party supplying the info? Shouldn't THAT company be reported to the MD Atty General?

Jessica: NO, you cannot rely on companies to bill correctly (doesn't this blog prove that?!?). Technology is fallable. In this case, the cell company did not provide the horoscopes; they passed along the fee--just like making a purchase with VISA or MASTERCARD.

YES, you should check all of your bills. If you don't have the time, ok, then resign yourself to paying extra and that's ok if you have the money and don't care. Me? I check each one of my bills every month--including the electric bill and cable bill. I've caught extra charges on the electric bill as well as on the cable bill, not to mention other bills. There's always at least one error in the stack of bills every month.

It would be nice if there were never any billing errors. It would also be nice if Baltimorons were more friendly and greeted each other, but that ain't gonna happen, either. It would be even better if people took some personal responsibility, but from the posts here, that ain't gonna happen either.

My original post stands, esp. since Jay is a FINANCIAL columnist and CHIEF ECONOMICS writer. Journalists read and write about this stuff all the time and should be better prepared. I would never hire an accountant who did not balance his own checkbook; same theory applies here.

I'm not dumb, knd01. I realize that companies make mistakes, and yes, I DO check most of my bills most of the time. My point is that this phone company was really probably being dishonest, not just making a mistake. Companies are counting on people being too busy to look at every detail of their bill, and they are correct, we are too busy sometimes. They take full advantage of it. Companies should be punished for such "mistakes" either by having to reimburse, lose customers, or be fined/sued (or all 3!)

I'm all for "personal responsibility." I would just like to see more "corporate responsibility."

Thank you, Jessica, you just proved my hypothesis. I didn't actually write this last time, but I had guessed correctly: most responders here are anti-[cell phone]company. You said you believe the company is intentionally being dishonest. That's neither true nor fair to the company. (Maybe AT&T is just as much a victim because now they have to eat this cost; which will ultimately be passed on to the rest of us...)

Do you think your credit card company is at fault when erroneous charges appear on your bill? Neither cell companies nor credit card companies intentionally put fraudulent charges on your bill; it's just what happens with today's technology and how people can order things via the Internet.

I'm just trying to be objective and see the error on BOTH sides. Yes, any erroneous charges need to be reported by the consumer and taken care of by the company; but by the same token the consumer needs to be responsible and look at their bills and report anything misleading in a timely manner.

In the banking industry, with your credit card and your bank debit card, federal law mandates that erroneous charges must be reported within a certain timeframe and the loss of credit/debit cards must also be reported with a few days, else the CONSUMER is responsible for the charges.

And, again, the title/tone of this article, shouldn't be "how I got one over on AT&T" but "consumer beware and review your monthly bills" and/or it should have highlighted the company/third-party responsible for the horoscopes/other info -- that's who is probably the bigger culprit than AT&T. Or, this could have been even more insightful and included info on how that subscription information passes through AT&T and gets on the bill.

knd01:

No one can dispute that monthly bills need to be reviewed. What the problem here is that AT&T is making MILLIONS on an unsuspecting client base. Example: Despite repeated requests and calls, they still will not stop my child's phone from accessing the internet. So if my son hits a wrong button I automatically get charged for 1 minute of web time. A Google search search tells me that AT&T wireless has around 72.9 million customers. Do you want to estimate how much they make "accidentally" each year, month or day? This article is timely for me because just yesterday I printed all of my 2009 invoices with AT&T and found just under $300 in billing errors that they refunded after I made a detailed list and called CS. That is ridiculous. Either they are inept or corrupt. Either way they lost a 13 year customer. The CS rep even admitted that some of the 3rd party charges resulted from 'spammed' texts and the like.
Don't believe me? Try calling them and requesting that your phone not accept texts and no internet. Have it only make and receive calls(what? a phone that only makes calls???). See how long it takes to happen, if ever. The average time frame from ad hoc questioning of friends and family that use ATT is around 3 months with about 5-6 calls to CS.
You cannot relate ATT to credit card companies either. If a vendor makes false charges that enough consumers complain about that vendor will lose their ability to take that credit card faster than you can say "screw the consumer".
Reviewing a bill is good practice, but can sometimes be unrealistic. Do you measure the volume of liquid in every soft drink you buy? Drain your gas tank after you buy gas to verify that you actually received 4.35 gallons? I shouldn't be fined $300 for not taking the time to review a 19 page invoice each month.

And while Mr.Hancock did eventually review his bill, the point of the article is how ATT attempted to fraudulently charge him money. That is illegal. Why would you agree with illegal charges?
-GP

I'm dealing with this very situation on one of my family's phones. After the 4th (increasingly) irate call, they finally suggested that they could turn on "purchase blocker" to prevent my account from being billed for services I didn't sign up for, nor did I receive.

Brilliant!

Incidentally, the first 3 times I called, I was told such a service was not possible, but "they would be glad to remove charges in the future, should they show up again."

One of the downsides to automatic billing and email statements is that many people don't review them as often for accuracy - a fact these companys take advantage of. How is it that these companies are trusted by ATT and other wireless companies enough that they can bill my account for a service without ATT ever verifying that I signed up for or accepted their terms? Knowing an active wireless number is apparently enough authorization to start billing that number.

Sorry, paperless revolution, you'll have to wait until ATT doesn't allow companies to defraud its wireless customers before I go back to paperless statements.

And, knd01 - sure we should all check our statements carefully every month. That changes nothing about the unethical behavior that puts these fraudulent charges on our bills in the first place. I've caught all of mine, and still resent that I have to spend 20 minutes a month of my time fixing these errors, while these 3rd parties are implicitly trusted and automatically bill my account.

I have been a customer of ATT wireless for 3 months and i am sooooo sorry that i changed. They are hard to reach through either automated phone hell or internet maize. They have charged me every month for data or other things that I did not use or request and they have not been as nice about fixing the charges. They they have the audacity to off me a type of parental controls for $4.99/mo to stop these bogus charges. I am soooo dissatisfied with ATT. Let that be a warning to anyone reading this that is not already hooked into a contract.

To knd01 - you are too nice to ATT! My credit card company has several layers of security. If a charge is made at the lowest level of security no questions are asked for a credit. ATT treats me like a fool that doesn't know what charges I made on my phone and only grudgingly credits me. ATT wants to charge me for controls that would prevent bogus charges. I'm sorry but I cannot give ATT the benefit of the doubt. If they wanted to they could fix or nearly fix this problem. T-mobile could and did.

Interesting to find others who have had problems with A.T.&T. I always thought they were a respectable company. Currently having problems with bad math on my bill. Total minutes they say I used is way under what I actually used.
I have a month to month contract with 5000 night and weekend minutes, I added the minutes on my recent bill, I did not use as many minutes as they say I did on nights and weekends.
I called yesterday to cancel service, they won't listen to me. I went into local A.T.&T. store, they gave me false info.
Thanks for the tip on contacting the state Attorney General's, I was thinking about the Public Utilities Comission.

I had this same problem with AT&T and they refused to refund all my charges. I didn't notice the charges for 4 months, and they refunded 3 months of charges but would do nothing about the first month. I called allmobilealerts (1-888-703-6285 or support@allmobilealerts.com) and they refunded the money via check after a ~1 minute phonecall.
Completely ridiculous that you can sign anyone up for the service simply by entering their phone number. Just go to the website and see for yourself how easy it is to get charges on your bill that you didn't sign up for.
I think its likely that if you have 1-3 months of charges on your bill, you could call AT&T to have them remove the charges, then immediately call AllMobileAlerts to have them refund the charges and possibly end up getting refunded by both companies. I guess then its up to them to check their monthly bills to make sure the refunds are accurate.

I did as someone stated on another website to text "unsubscribe". by entering 72078 STOP i did and received confirmation that it was unsubscribed. I also called the #1-,888..703**6285 it listed and they are sending me a 9.99 refund as well in the mail but it will just take a few days to receive :)

how about this att is trying to charge my daughter with a 301meg download in one day when we had no cellservice or power to even run the cell system