Tell HN: Help beat "cramming": Switch to paper billing for wireless
I'd switched to AT&T paperless billing several years ago for our cell phone service, but I hadn't been logging in regularly to look at the detailed bills. It turns out that for the last six months my college-senior daughter has been getting charged $9.99 per month for stock-picking services; she knows nothing about it.
I just arranged for AT&T to block all future third-party charges, and got a partial refund; I'm going after the rest of the refund tomorrow when their offices are open.
I also switched back to paper billing, so that I can easily check my statements every month. [Forget] AT&T; they can pay to print and mail my statement to me each month, since obviously I can't depend on them not to let third parties take my money without authorization.
(I've read news reports that this is a cozy little arrangement between the phone companies and the third parties, in which the phone companies get a cut of the unauthorized charges until the customer complains.)