<p>Imagine my shock and chagrin when I received our Verizon cell phone bill yesterday and saw THREE “premium” text messages at $9.98 EACH!</p>
<p>Apparently my daughter responded to some “free” online offer for ringtones and must have provided her cell phone number. (The Verizon customer service rep assured me that she had to confirm her willingness to pay $9.98 to proceed for some sort of subscription, but who knows…)</p>
<p>I recommend calling and blocking these kind of messages! I’ve also told my daughters never to provide their cell phone numbers unless it is for some necessary and legitimate purpose.</p>
<p>Yep. Son called me telling me he was getting these. He researched it online and found out they were charging for them! He had never requested them and never responded to them. I called Verizon and yes, the 9.99 charge was there. They were able to put a block on all premium text messaging and credited back the 9.99 charge. Oh, Verizon also said to tell him to text “Cancel” back to the number. He did and got a confirmation message for it. Then they put the block on. No problem since.</p>
<p>Yes, we had to go through 2 or 3 months of my son having one of these charges on his account - each month we called Verizon each month they took it off - for some reason it took a couple of months before the block actually happened, but they were good about taking it off each time.</p>
<p>That’s interesting. My brother and I both got a couple of them in February I guess… imagine my dad’s surprise when he saw the bill that is normally $160 and it was $195!</p>
<p>He went to the Verizon store and they blocked it, but he was still stuck paying for them that month.</p>
<p>“Do you know the content of the messages that need to be responded to in this way?”</p>
<p>I think it was just advertising stuff. I don’t recall the name of the company, but I know they had ringtones. When you did a google search on the company, all sorts of complaints of this nature came up.</p>
<p>We have AT&T - you could block it for all accts online. My D also got a few last Sep. In speaking with AT&T they showed me how to set my options online (or the rep could do it for you) to block those type of charges.</p>
<p>Try to find the phone number for the vendor- it may be on your bill. If so, call them, demand customer service and tell them you never agreed to this package and they better credit you back all the charges immediately or you will pursue legal action. Be firm and ask to go to the next level. I did this for some of our work Blackberrys that got “premium packages” mysteriously on them. (I did pull the “I’m the company lawyer” card). We got all the money back.</p>