WASHINGTON, D.C. –
After a year-long study conducted by the FCC, today it was announced that every single major cell phone carrier in the United States has been secretly adding extra data charges to the bills of customers, in a scheme to make more money that was allegedly concocted by the CEOs of each company.
“All the carriers have been found to be in cahoots,” said FCC spokesman Mario Redding. “They have all conspired to add costs to the bills of their customers. Sometimes, it was only a matter of a few cents. In other cases, it was several dollars, and in rare instances, it was upwards of twenty or thirty dollars in overage charges. We are still investigating the matter.”
Redding says that his job over the last year is to comb through the bills of cell phone customers, as well as the billing practices of the carriers, looking for over charging patterns.
“We expected to see very few instances of gouging, but instead, we saw it on every single bill that we looked at, going back over several years,” said Redding.
The FCC is still investigating the charges, but they did say that a layman would “never notice” the charges on his bill, because they don’t just show up as overages.
“These companies, they’re stupid, but they’re not that stupid,” said Redding. “They have their ways, and we’ve caught on, and notices have been filed. If you think you’re getting ‘free’ data on your carrier’s plan, think again. Nothing is free, nothing is unlimited. There’s always a catch, you just have to find it.”
