Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Who's in your wallet?
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
Pssst. I'll let you in on a little trend here, but you have to share it with at least three people. Promise? Because I'm counting on word-of-mouth for it to catch on. Here goes:
Cellphones are the new credit cards.
OK, maybe that announcement isn't as trendy as the new i-Phone, but pay attention. What you don't know about your cellphone can cost you.
You already know your phone is an address book, appointment calendar, text and instant messenger, camera, quick video camera (still waiting for something good to post on YouTube), MP3, Internet connection, gamer, mini laptop and before long a TV and DVR. If someone figures out how to get it to chill a six-pack and tuck us in at night, our connected lives would be nearly perfect.
A whole lot of someones, though, have figured out how to reach out and touch your wallet through your cellphone, and your mobile phone provider is only too happy to let them.
Think I'm just making this up? Well, I have it on good authority from my very own cellphone carrier. When my thick skull couldn't seem to grasp the concept -- companies I never agreed to have a fiduciary relationship with could bill me for services I never asked for -- an exasperated customer service representative blurted: "People have just got to understand their phones are credit cards."
Think I'm wrong? Take a good look at your cellphone bill. Yes, I know it runs many pages of itty-bitty type. But do it, if you haven't looked at the charges lately -- especially if you have a family line with (gasp) a teenager using it. (Another caution from my provider: Those family plans with three or more lines? Not for kids. Take 'em away, he said.)
I'm guessing some of you might discover a few $4.95 or $9.99 surprises. Little amounts, fees you might not have noticed right off, especially if your bill fluctuates from month to month.
The charges are for "free" or "complimentary" ringtones, wallpaper, downloads and such. No sooner do you give a company your number for the "freebie" and you've become a subscriber. Did you miss the fine print that free isn't free? This is easy to do, because most of the sites I've checked (they're easy to find, just do a search for ringtones) bring up all the razzmatazz. You have to know to scroll down, way down, to read the buried fine print.
I found out about this because I am what my children call a "mean mother." I agreed two years ago to pay for a family plan (adding an extra fee for unlimited texting when 400 messages a month weren't enough), on the condition that any other charges came out of their pockets. So every month, I look at the charges for each line (which is also a good way to keep tabs on whom they call), and collect any money, if due.
About six months ago, two charges (one for $4.95, the other for $9.99) appeared on the teen's line. She, of course, hadn't a clue. I called our provider and learned about services that prey upon unwitting cellphone users. They advertise all over the Web on sites that kids frequent, offering "free" stuff.
So we were duped. The first time I paid the bill, cautioned the child and called the phone numbers our provider gave us to have the services removed.
The second month when the charges were still there, my provider said, "Oh, no, you can't call them. You have to text them, so we have a record of it." So we sent texts, and I told the carrier that I -- the adult and bill payer -- had not authorized these charges. I did not want them showing up in the future, this practice was extremely deceptive and that they should be ashamed to allow third-parties to bill their unwitting customers.
The third month, I told them I wasn't paying the charges and would just subtract them from this and subsequent bills.
On our fourth conversation, the one in which I was informed my phone was a credit card, the customer service representative offered since I was such a good customer, blah blah blah, to waive half the fee; I said I'd be unwilling to pay the other half.
I wondered if other wireless phone customers were as incensed and started phoning around. I was bounced from one Virginia agency to the next, until I was informed the commonwealth doesn't tabulate or investigate consumer complaints against the wireless industry. That task is left to the Federal Communications Commission. At that agency I was told the mobile phone industry and the mobile marketing association were taking the lead on developing "best practices." Yet another federal government hen turning the coop over to the foxes.
I was directed to two Web sites: ctia.org, which is the "international association for the wireless telecommunications industry, dedicated to expanding the wireless frontier," and mmaglobal.com, the Mobile Marketing Association where I learned that mobile advertising expects to be a $4 billion industry by 2011. And that the industry knows there's a huge problem beyond the huge economic benefits it stands to gain.
Frederick Ghahramanni, founder of AirG, in a Mobile Advertising article, asks, "How do mobile operators feel about dodgy off-deck content providers buying premium placement on their portals to ensnare customers into a recurring $10/month subscription through a free (oops I mean 'zero cost') ringtone offering,"
My operator obviously thinks it's a-OK. After all, it thinks my phone is a credit card.
But wait, it'll only get worse. Ghahramanni writes, "companies have begun to understand that a mobile phone placed 8 inches from your face is a better platform to inculcate a message and brand into your thought patterns than a 42-inch plasma TV situated 8 feet away in your living room."
Makes me long for rotary dial.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
