A number of jurisdictions are investigating increasing reports of "cramming" Web services, charging for services the customers never requested or accepted, PC World says.
Such a user was Cornelia Fleming, who spurned a telephone solicitation for Web services for her family furniture business, agreeing only to accept a mailing about them - but who learned the hard way about cramming, when the business's Verizon phone bill showed two separate $32 charges from Hold Billing Services, the biller for National Online Services, PC World says in its June issue.
The billing items referred to charges for an Internet directory listing, a two-page Website at True Yellow Pages, and Internet access, which Fleming told PC World she never accepted. And the magazine says Fleming isn't even close to alone: "Hundreds" of small businesses around the U.S. are complaining likewise about unordered services.
Cramming is the first cousing to slamming, the practice in which long distance carriers get switched without the customer's request or knowledge, a practice often believed to be as common as breasts around the adult Internet. Another cram victim was a Connecticut jeweler, Geoff Sigg, who spotted a charge from Spoonfull.net on his SBC Communications bill last fall, meaning he'd paid $4.31 plus tax a month to a company he never even heard of, PC World says.
And when he discovered Spoonfull was billing him to list his business in a Net directory, he tried to get to his directory listing...and couldn't even find it. "No sales call, no actual directory listing," he told the magazine.
Spoonfull, though, is one of a quarter of Web service companies owned by a mother and son team, Mary Lou and Willoughby Farr, PC World reports. Their businesses have been sued by Illinois and North Carolina attorneys general, and the pair are being probed by Florida as well, the magazine says. The son denied knowingly billing someone who never signed up, but the mother refused to comment when reached by PC World
