Archive for October, 2008

Land of the Free and Home of the Brave

Monday, October 20th, 2008

I challenge Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to tell this grieving mother that her son is anti-American because of his faith.

Text Message Slamming Fraud

Saturday, October 11th, 2008

Update: I had a BFO today remembering that I answered an online IQ test challenge which indicated to me something about a subscription to which I immediately sent a STOP message as instructed at the bottom. There was a reply telling me that I had no subscriptions at that number… same message I got when I entered my phone number at the number Sprint gave me. So I did supposedly interact with these people, and they told me there was no subscription…twice, but they still billed me for $9.99. There was no warning that this bill was coming and there was no indication when I did the IQ test thing that I would be billed for it…just standard text message fees and my account has unlimited texting; so I thought I was covered.

The IQ test? Well it did seem very easy. I answered the questions online and they required me to text them a code to see what my IQ test result was. That is how they suckered me in. I can’t believe I deleted the message from my phone… but they did tell me that I am approaching genius. Oh yeah… I’m really a hot number :-) Like about a 140 here.

I wish I could remember where I found the IQ test to provide further warning about this trap.

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My Sprint cell phone arrived today with a charge on it for $9.99 which made no sense at all.

Mobile Messenger: Alerts – 44999 Text Alerts – 10/03

Now I don’t remember making any mobile messenger type thing on 10/03. I did vote for the Design Star back in June, but that didn’t result in any charges to my cell phone because I have unlimited text messages. This was something else that supposedly happened on October 3..

I called Sprint right away to get this explained and hopefully removed from my account. The customer service rep was really kind to me. She listened to my woeful story and gave me a number to call. This was supposedly a TXT4fun subscription. The number to get it removed is 800-235-7105. She also agreed to remove the charge from my account.

Then I called the 800 number she gave me. It’s an automated system that answers and I had to enter my cell phone number there to “unsubscribe”. This sent a message to my cell phone telling me that I have no subscriptions there! Duh! So why did they generate a bill to my Sprint account?

They have a supposed explanation in the automated system which just says that I had to have texted to them in order to be subscribed. They have a function to get my subscription “investigated” for which I left a message on the answering machine with my home number for call back. Will follow up with more info if they do call me back on this.