Hotshot Connect Forum :: Watch your phone bills

Tom Cobb · Site Admin

This is an email from my cousin who lives in North Texas. This happened to them.
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Did you know that people can buy online services using your phone number?
It's called 'phone cramming' (Google it, its a real scam) and apparently many online companies are allowed to set up services for their users simply by having a telephone number (your telephone company account #). Most of these services are for online paging, voicemail and efax services. I'd never even heard of this until I realized my phone bill was a little higher than the previous month. There was an order for new online service through a 3rd party company on my phone bill and because I had auto-pay set up on my account, the balance was paid with no question. The phone company cannot help in this situation because it is a 3rd party so I called the 3rd party's customer support and thankfully got a customer service agent. She informed me, very casually, that someone (and she gave me a name I'd never heard of) probably just used my phone number to set up their efax/voicemail service. She assured me that the amount would be credited within the next two billing cycles. I immediately disabled my auto-pay function on my home phone and cell phone bills. I don't want to take a chance of unknowingly paying for someone else's crap.

Here's an example of just one company that is able to do this:
http://www.rocketvoicemail.com/account.aspx
Check out the disclaimer at the bottom of the page. This is disturbing!

Thankfully, my account was only charged $12, but I've read online about others who have been hit up for a lot more!
Keep an eye out for this kind of scam!