WASHINGTON — AT&T wireless customers may want to take a closer look at their old phone bills because they may have money coming back to them.
The Federal Trade Commission said Wednesday that AT&T Mobility LLC, a subsidiary of the telecom giant, has agreed to a hefty $105 million settlement after the government accused the company of unlawfully billing customers for hundreds of millions of dollars in bogus charges — a practice known as cramming.
The multiagency settlement includes $80 million that will be paid to the FTC for consumer refunds.
According to the complaint, the charges appeared on AT&T phone bills but were from third-party companies for services people never asked to receive or were duped into subscribing to — things such as horoscope texts, celebrity gossip and flirting tips.
The FTC says AT&T kept at least 35 percent of the unauthorized charges it imposed on customers.
Plenty of consumers complained. In 2011 alone, AT&T received more than 1.3 million calls to its customer service department about the charges, the commission said.
“This should have and, in fact, did ring alarm bells at AT&T,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said at the settlement announcement. “But instead of acting to stop the charges, AT&T continued to make hundreds of millions of dollars from the practice.”
