Wisconsin Goes After Cramming Company

from the take-that dept

Over the past few years, the practice of "cramming" has become more popular. A scam company calls up a small business, talks really fast, and uses some language tricks to get people to agree to be placed in their "web directory" or some other bogus concept. In exchange for this, the small businesses are charged a monthly fee that shows up on their phone bill. In some cases, the scam companies will even fake the recordings of calls to make it sound like the small business agreed to be listed. In almost every case, though, the victims have no clue what happened. The state of Wisconsin has apparently received enough such complaints against one California company that it's now suing them for cramming. The lawsuit also notes that, not only did people not agree to be put into the company's "web directory," but that the company didn't even bother to put the companies it scammed into the web directory it ran anyway. It also didn't donate a portion of the proceeds to a religious group, as promised.