AT&T settles class-action over unauthorized cellular charges
June 14, 2008
Well, looks like my complaint back in Jan was right on the mark.
AT&T settles class-action over unauthorized cellular charges
By Jacqui Cheng | Published: June 03, 2008 - 12:57PM CT
What do you mean you didn’t mean to buy Justin Timberlake’s “Sexy Back” to use as a ringtone on your phone? It’s on your bill! If you’ve ever seen a mysterious charge pop up on your AT&T cell phone bill, take note: AT&T has received preliminary approval to settle a class-action lawsuit over unauthorized charges for ringtones and other third-party mobile content. All US residents who have been charged for such content between January 1, 2004 and May 30, 2008 are now eligible for refunds, even if they are no longer account holders with AT&T.
The complaint was originally filed against AT&T late last year by Tracie McFerren, Morris Fiddler, and Kristen Hensley. The plaintiffs took issue with AT&T’s (and most mobile carriers’) “partnerships” with third-parties that allow the companies to automatically charge things like ringtones, games, and wallpapers, and daily joke text messages to the customer’s account. Unlike credit card purchases, which still require authorization from the user in some way, these mobile purchases only need to be associated with a cell phone number and be billed directly through the customer’s AT&T bill. AT&T gets a cut of the mobile sales by allowing these companies to bill directly through it, similar to the cramming done on landlines by third parties.
Bux.to a Scam? If if smells like poop…
January 27, 2008
Money for free for the masses from Bux.to? My guess = no. This just gives me a bad feeling. I first learned of this while watching a live session of the Chris Pirillo show at live.pirillo.com. Chris was talking about Bux.to and how he was excited and felt pretty good about its legitimacy. Now even though I trust Chris and have no reason to doubt him, I still have serious doubts about Bux.to and their system. Chris decided to sign up for an account (I think he signed up for a premium account and spent about $500). After a short period of doing this and announcing it online live on his show, he had already made just under a hundred dollars in the first twelve hours.
A basic account is free and from what I understand, the system works by paying a small amount (1 cent) to a member for viewing paid advertising (all seem to be get rich quick ads) on their site for a period of time (30 seconds) – the more ads you review, the more money you make. On the backside of this, Bux.to figures than can generate enough people viewing advertiser’s links that some will eventually make a purchase from that advertiser.
If you don’t want to do all the viewing and clicking yourself, you can always purchase your own referrals instead of getting your own for free. This, in theory, increases your view rate and should bring in more money. This, I suspect, is where Bux.to is making their monies. It’s a numbers game - You spend $459.00 to purchase referrals and they do the ad viewing for you. The more referrers you have under you actually viewing ads is what is supposed to bring in the funds. That is, if they spend as much time as you’d like viewing these ads…30 seconds each? Sounds like the fun would wear outta this pretty quick.
Here’s what I’ve found on Bux.to:
- Their paypal Id is: FreelancerMarketing.com. A website with absolutely nothing on it but some worthless links. A simple email address, no address, nada, zip, zilch. Wouldn’t you want people to know more about your consultancy business?
- Bux.to name registration is private and the site hosting goes out to somewhere in Germany.
- Their forums are at abux.info
- There are over 700 Youtube.com videos on Bux.to mostly by younger males wanting you to become their referral. Many use the maximum payout example while talking about it as an enticement to get you to sign up under them.
- They sell you ads for anywhere from .019 cents per view down to .015 if you spend $16,000.00 with them
Bottom line, I’m keeping my money in the bank. I don’t have the numbers as far as referrals that Chris does, so a dollar a day isn’t enough to get me interested. As of this writing, I haven’t heard if Chris actually got his initial $500 back.
If you have success with bux.to, I’d like to hear about it. Please drop me a line and I’ll share it.
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