Nick was tired of getting the run around from his insurance company, part of United Heathcare, over frequent (and pricey) billing errors.
billing
Dear Comcast: It's Been 3 Months, Stop Incorrectly Billing Me $320 A Month For Cable
By 7.1.08
Christopher made the mistake of calling Comcast to order a baseball package and now he’s been stuck with an outrageously high (and incorrect) bill. Every month. For 3 months. He calls and calls and they tell him it’s fixed and it never is…
Chase Shrinks Credit Due Dates Without Warning, Profiting Off Fees
By 6.23.08
Got a Chase credit card? Check your bill to see if the due date shrunk. For the past ten months, the due date on reader NDphoxylady’s four Chase credit card due date was the fifteenth. Then, without warning or notice, it became the tenth. NDphoxylady only noticed when she was charged a $39 late fee and a $20 finance charge. When she complained to Chase, they told her that simply changing the due date on the bill was adequate notice. Nu-uh
Listen Time Warner, The 60-Year-Old English Teacher Didn't Order $1,400 Of Porn
By 6.21.08
Time Warner wants reader Nancy, a 60-year-old English teacher, to pay $1,400 for ordering porn—including 17 flicks supposedly viewed on a single day. Nancy didn’t order the porn, and has no clue how the charges were associated with her cable box, but one useless Time Warner representative suggested: “maybe your dog ordered them.”
Scam Alert: Are Hotels Billing You For Goodies You Didn't Eat, Hoping You Won't Check Your Bill?
By 6.16.08
Travel superhero Christopher Elliott is wondering if there’s some systematic shadiness afoot in the land of the hotel minibar. He’s been hearing reports of items not consumed showing up on hotel bills, and when the error is brought to the attention of the front desk, refunds are instantly credited with no argument. Hmmm.
AT&T Agrees To Refund Unauthorized Third-Party Charges On Cellphone Bills
By 6.3.08
AT&T Mobility has agreed to offer refunds to customers who were charged for third-party services like ringtones, although if you were frequently a victim of this you’ll quickly exhaust your refund quota: “Customers will able to claim refunds for spurious charges that appeared on up to three of their monthly bills between Jan. 1, 2004, and May 30, 2008.” AT&T should be sending out a notification to its customers “soon,” but you can already download a refund request.
Microsoft And The $1,632 Copy Of Vista
By 5.24.08
Microsoft charged Bill $1,632 for a single Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade license. Each time Bill, an IT Manager, tried to his enter his payment details through Windows Live Marketplace he was told that Microsoft could not be contacted, and to “please try again later.” What Microsoft really meant was, “Ha! Got your money! How ’bout some more?!”
Sprint: Can You Please Give Us $39,952 Today?
By 5.6.08
Reader Richard says he came home this summer to angry parents “because of our sprint bill with the family share plan was insanely high.” Of course, it turned out to be the same typo we’d written about before, but we really enjoyed the polite but firm manner in which Sprint asked Richard’s parents for $39,952… “today.”
More Info On The $9.87 Credit Card Scam
By 4.29.08
MGD at dslreports read our post last night about Prophotosland.com and its fraudulent charge to reader Megan’s credit card. He’s been following the scammers—”an organized crime syndicate operated from Eastern Europe”—for nearly three years now, and has a ton of highly valuable information on them, including their recent targeting of military personnel stationed overseas. Bottom line: cancel your credit card, Megan, because they’ve got access to it now—and report the charge as fraudulent rather than dispute it.
Watch Out For $9.87 Credit Card Scam From Prophotosland.com
By 4.29.08
A reader named Megan noticed an unfamiliar charge for $9.87 from prophotosland.com on her WaMu credit card statement, so she began to investigate it.
Soldier Requires Local Media To Get His Money Back From Sprint
By 4.16.08
While Jeff Cannizzaro was off fighting in Iraq, he was also fighting Sprint. Jeff suspended his phone while overseas, but left some money in the account. While he was away, Sprint kept deducting small amounts from his balance. His wife kept calling and writing emails, trying everything they could think of to get Sprint to stop deducting the money. Nothing worked.
Comcast Is Renting Your Land And They're Not Paying Their Bill
By 3.26.08
When you don’t pay your bill Comcast cuts your cable off, but what happens when Comcast doesn’t pay its bill to you?
Qwest: The Phone Line We Installed In Your Father's Nursing Home Never Worked, But Pay Us Anyway
By 3.21.08
My father grew up in Ottawa, a small Midwest town in Illinois. For the majority of his life, he had 2 full-time jobs. He was the receiving clerk for a hardware store and he was also a house painter. He went to work between 3 to 5 AM and rarely got home until after dark, 6 days a week. He was very active and self-sufficient so when in 1992 he was diagnosed with a particularly aggressive case of multiple sclerosis, he was devastated as was my entire family. His MS never went into regression and within 5 years he was wheelchair bound, in a nursing home, and very reliant on others.
Watch Out For Cramming On Your Phone Bill
By 3.20.08
Josh discovered a mysterious $13 fee on his parents’ phone bill, and as he tracked down the source of the bogus charge, he learned a lot about cramming. The FCC describes it as “the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill” by third party companies, who bank on you being too confused/distracted/annoyed by your hard-to-read bill to notice.
Online Convenience Fee Is 63% Of Utility Bill
By 3.19.08
Reader Michael says:
I moved into a new apartment last month, and just received my first electric bill. It is run through a company called AUM Inc. (aum-inc.com), on behalf of my apartment complex. I went to pay the bill online (as I prefer to pay my bills) and I noticed something on the page. In fact, it’s on the page no less than 5 different times.
EU Pushes For Per-Second Wireless Billing
By 3.17.08
Viviane Reding, the European Union’s Telecommunications Commissioner, is our new wireless hero. She’s demanding that wireless carriers in Europe begin billing on a per-second basis rather than per-minute, because “at the retail level, the difference between billed and actual minutes appears to be typically around 20 percent.”
