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.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in thread ]