Good
Having worked for them and AT&T, I cannot think of any industry more deserving of punishment.
OK, maybe insurance companies.
US mobile operators Sprint and Verizon will pay out a combined $158m after the Feds ruled that they allowed advertisers to tack unwanted premium charges onto customers' bills. According to the FCC, the carriers looked the other way when dodgy companies signed customers up for services without warning them that would be billed …
>Verizon's $90m fine will hardly make a dent in its pocketbook
Except being in the news cycle for a being a dishonest b*stard (some people actually need reminding) will cause a bigger goodwill hit than that. Their saving grace may be all their competitors were doing it as well. Never ceases to amaze me to see just how little Baby Boomer leadership (for example Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, born May 28, 1954) even pretends to care about business ethics. The Worst Generation for sure.
Except being in the news cycle for a being a dishonest b*stard (some people actually need reminding) will cause a bigger goodwill hit than that. Their saving grace may be all their competitors were doing it as well.
That's why being in the news won't matter. If it was ONE company people who rightfully took offence could change, but if they're all doing it it matters not one iota, and the fines do not strike me as provoking an attitude correction in the boardroom. It appears they took a leaf out of the "how to screw over customers" book used by Wall Street banks.
I share the sentiment of your comment, but would add that the CEO's of these giant telco's probabaly aren't even aware that their marketing and operations departments are running these types of "service" (read : scams).
I'd also posit that it is most likely that the pushing of these services is done complicitly on the back of a risk based business case which goes something like this:
Predicted earnings running scam = $200m
Risk assessment against being fined = - £100m
Scam profit / Ker'chiiing-ment = $100m
Good eh? The new business is all about the money. Fuck the ethics.
The telco cartel long ago realised that customers have a short memory. And when customers have a limited choice in other suppliers, and, when all of those alternatives (i.e. your cartel partners) are running the same scam - the risk of reputational damage means nothing
Consumers rightfully expect their monthly phone bills will reflect only those services that they've purchased,
If that were really true the FCC would do a thorough audit of the billing practices at these companies. Granted I haven't worked there for at least 5 years now, but one of my former employers with only 300 employees was so frequently overcharged on their phone bills that it was cost effective for them to hire a full time employee to review the monthly bills and challenge improper charges.