I just called AT&T about these charges.  He refunded the $10.67 I was charged, and cancelled the subscription.

He told me that the charge was added by Verisign – confirming my googled knowledge that Jamster is at least partially owned by Verisign.  So… yet another reason to dislike Verisign.

He also added a purchase control thingy to AT&T’s MediaNET to prevent anyone from charging my phone line again without my explicit approval.

I asked why that wasn’t the default – they should automatically verify that you want these kinds of things.  His answer?  “By law we have to allow people to buy things on their phone.”

Guess what?  Verification does not in any way negate the ability to buy things on one’s phone. It was an idiotic excuse, but I didn’t want to yell at him.  After all, there wasn’t anything this particular customer service agent could do about it.

Let me be clear, though: enabling verification by default would resolve the most glaring problems with the system, and if they do that I’ll be satisfied.

So anyway I asked who I can talk to about getting AT&T to stop this sort of thing from happening on a scale larger than “we’ll refund things for whoever happens to notice and complain”.  At first he said “we have no department for that”, but after I pressed him on the issue (there must be someone I could talk to) he directed me to the “Contact Us” section of AT&T Wireless’ website.

So off I go:

…

…

… HULK SMASH THINGS.

Looks like my next course of action is to track down some fraud department number on my own, or failing that, find a VP’s (or CEO’s) phone number and leave a message for them.

Gather round, it’s story time!

Back in August 2008 I upgraded my AT&T plan from a single line to a five-line family plan.  On my second bill (dated Oct 5, 2008), one of the lines showed a charge like this:

“Flycell”… Mblox… $10.66

I called up my sister-in-law and asked her whether she had solicited the purchase.  I didn’t care if she did, but if she had I wanted her to pay for it.  Turns out she hadn’t.

So, I called up AT&T and got them to reverse the charge.  They said they would, and that they had unsubscribed the line from that merchant’s service.

Sounds simple, right?  Well, look at the next bill, dated Nov 5, 2008:

“Flycell”… Mblox… -$10.66 (refund)

“Flycell”… Mblox… $10.66

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… $10.66

Well, this isn’t looking good.  They obviously didn’t cancel the subscription the first month, because it was charged again, and now there’s a *second* subscription!  What’s worse, the contact phone number for Mblox and OpenMarket are exactly the same, so it’s the same company.

So I called AT&T again, and they told me they’d refund it and it’d all be taken care of.

Here’s the next bill, dated Dec 5, 2008:

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… -$10.66 (refund)

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… -$10.66 (refund)

“Thumbplay”… OpenMarket… $10.66

Hmm.  Two refunds for Thumbplay and now two charges for Thumbplay.  Unfortunately at the time I didn’t realize that I never got the refund for the second Flycell charge.

Well, it appeared to have sorted itself out, and sure enough the Jan 5, 2009 bill had no charges from either company.

… and now we get to Jan 5, 2010, this time on my line:

“XXL: Mobile content”… Jamster… $10.67

$#@*&$(*@#%$

Note that neither of us ever solicited these subscriptions, neither of us ever gave out our numbers to those “get a free ringtone” websites, and neither of us have any affiliation with any of these companies in any way.

It is, quite simply, blatant theft.  Jamster and friends throw charges at people’s lines (using their established business relationship with various mobile carriers) and just hope they won’t notice.  Some quick googling (”jamster scam” and “mblox scam” both turn up some dirt) shows that this is not uncommon.  Yes, a lot of the people who fall victim to this scam have signed up for Jamster’s “free” ringtones; but a lot of them have not, and that’s where I fall.

The problem here is that AT&T does absolutely no verification to see whether the customer actually did subscribe to these things – for some unfathomable reason, they just trust Jamster.

Well, I’m going to call AT&T tomorrow morning and get them to rectify the situation yet again.  I’m also going to chase this up the org chart as high as I can to get something done about it.

So, have any of you experienced anything similar?

Edit: here’s part two.

I’ve been playing the beta of Star Trek Online over the last two days, and let me tell you – it’s really fun.

When the game was announced, I was worried that Penny Arcade’s comic would reflect the gameplay; that is, I was worried the missions would feel contrived to prevent you from using the types of technology that make Star Trek what it is.

More recently, I’ve been worried that the writing would be terrible; the reason for this worry was that the developers, Cryptic Studios, did an absolutely atrocious job of writing in Champions Online.  (The fact that I still liked it despite the writing and terrible balance speaks volumes about how entertaining the gameplay can be.)

Instead, what I find is a surprisingly well-written, non-contrived set of missions.  Indeed the game refers to them as “episodes”, and that’s kind of how they feel.

Space battles are quite entertaining, especially when they get large – two dozen player ships fighting a bunch of NPC battlecruisers makes for an epic battle scene – and the little touches make the battles that much more interesting.  When an enemy ship explodes, you need to get out of the way; I’ve been destroyed more than once when my shields were low and I was too close to a defeated enemy when his warp core exploded.

Ground battles are, similarly, well done.  I had been worried because in a lot of MMOs you just stand there trading blows with the enemy; that’s not how Star Trek portrays ground combat.   Instead, you get a personal shield, and you can dive and roll out of the way of incoming shots, and you have an away team to help you.

I also like that group missions are automatically grouped for you.  Say you’re patrolling the Risa sector; the game automatically matches you with other people also patrolling the sector so you don’t have to sit there waiting for people in chat to say they need to do it too.  It makes perfect sense, and it’s so convenient.

The beta has some bugs; sometimes missions won’t complete, or the graphics glitch and you spawn in ground areas with the ship model instead of the player model (or vice versa, in space).  But these things should be expected during a beta.  In fact the most annoying aspect of the beta so far has been players complaining about bugs.  Guess what?  If you want a bug-free game, the beta is not something you should be playing.  There is a price for early access.  (The other annoying thing has been players not reading mission text, or not looking around.  The answer to “where is the Admiral’s office” is “right where you beamed onto the station, under the big sign that says Admiral’s Office“.)

As a result of the entertaining time I’ve had playing the beta, I pre-ordered the Star Trek Online Collector’s Edition from Amazon.  Now I just have until the game launch to decide whether I want a lifetime subscription; I’m leaning toward “yes”.  I’m having far more fun playing this than I had playing Champions or Lord of the Rings or any other MMO I’ve tried.

At any rate, once the game is officially released and (hopefully) the beta’s kinks are worked out, I’m planning to do a Let’s Play series with Star Trek Online in the spirit of Shamus Young’s Let’s Play Champions Online series (which itself was in the spirit of Rutskarn’s Let’s Play Morrowind series).  I’m hoping it will be an epic story of a young Starfleet officer’s efforts to defend the Federation, rather than a story about how a young Starfleet officer retired at age 30 due to nonsensical plots (as Shamus’ series ends).  This will be an experiment which may fail completely, but nonetheless I’ll try.

Dear AT&T,

I am writing to let you know that your marketing department needs to be kicked in the head.   You see, I just got this letter in the mail from you:

Dear Preferred Customer,

Because we value you as a customer, I have a great deal for you.  It starts with the opportunity to get a FREE 3G phone when you activate an additional line of service!

That’s right, you’re Pre-Approved to receive a FREE phone when you activate an additional line of service with a new two-year agreement.

[...]

What’s more, you’ll continue to receive special equipment offers, plus a monthly corporate service discount of up to 8% on qualified monthly charges.

There are a few problems with this “offer”, all of which prove that you do not in fact value me as a customer.

First: This was printed with a computer.  Would it really have been too difficult to put my name instead of “Preferred Customer”?  It’s printed one inch higher, where the address goes, so clearly you know who this particular piece of paper would get sent to.

Second: I could not add a sixth line to my account even if I wanted to, because five lines is the maximum.

Third: My account currently has a 12% monthly discount through my employer.  Am I supposed to feel good that you’re offering me a smaller discount?

Fourth: As a result of the second and third points, I must conclude that “Pre-Approved” is a complete fabrication.  If there is a pre-approval process, it’s being run by a small group of blind monkeys.

So AT&T, you know that database query that extracts a list of customers for the mailing?  Yeah, pull that out.  I’m going to tell you how to fix your problems right now.

See how it starts with SELECT, then lists a bunch of fields, then it says FROM and a table name, and then there’s a WHERE clause?

Add two more things to that WHERE clause:

WHERE [...] AND discount < 0.08 AND num_lines < 5

You see, this way, you’ll filter out the people who couldn’t use your offer even if they wanted to (and you won’t insult them by offering them a discount lower than their current discount).

It’s a five second modification.  Please do it.  You’ll save trees not printing so many offers, and you’ll save money on paper and ink and postage.

Which brings up one last problem with this letter:

Fifth: You’re mailing me a paper letter.  I had thought I asked for everything electronically; it turns out that paper mailings are specifically opt-out.  Well, now I’ve opted out.

I probably would not have done that if you had bothered filtering your mailings so you would actually be sending them to people who might care.

Thanks for your attention.

Yeah, that Bono.  This has nothing to do with his music which is, generally speaking, decent.  No, my assertion is based on comments he made in the New York Times (which I first saw on Ars Technica).

I have some specific problems with Bono’s statements, so I’m going to tackle them one by one.

the only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files.

This claim is so ridiculous it makes me wonder what pharmaceuticals Bono has begun mixing into his food.  File sizes may have been relevant five years ago, but in these days of commonplace multi-GB game downloads, file sizes are nowhere near the top of anyone’s concerns.

1. The newspaper business’ problems have nothing to do with file sizes at all.  Their problems stem from declining classified ad revenue and the increased availability of free information.
2. The music business’ problems have nothing to do with file sizes at all.  Their problems stem from pushing crappy, DRM-laden music on their customers, and their hesitance to embrace a business model that works well with modern technology.  (But despite this, Ars points out that EMI, for example, is actually doing very well with rising revenues.)
3. The movie business’ problems have nothing to do with file sizes at all.  Their problems stem from pushing crappy, DRM-laden movies on their customers.  I’m all for superhero movies, but did we really need to make 10,000 sequels last year?  (Ars points out that box office receipts have been rising over the last three years.)

A decade’s worth of music file-sharing and swiping has made clear that the people it hurts are the creators

A decade’s worth of file-sharing has made it clear that the people hurting content creators are the publishers. Independent creators of music and games are finding that they can be far more profitable by distributing DRM-free content on their own and skipping the middleman.

In fact, publishers aren’t even necessary anymore.  It used to be that musicians couldn’t afford to edit and distribute their music without the support of a publisher willing to risk investing in them; nowadays, you can grab a cheap Mac that comes with the software you need to edit your music, and selling it yourself on the internet is essentially risk-free.

the people this reverse Robin Hooding benefits are rich service providers, whose swollen profits perfectly mirror the lost receipts of the music business.

… and yet again Bono exposes his ignorance.  ISPs don’t profit from music downloading.  If anything it costs them more, by having to support the bandwidth necessary to sustain it.  They certainly can’t advertise it.  At any rate, ISP profits certainly don’t “perfectly mirror” the lost receipts of the music business – especially because the music business isn’t actually losing money!

We’re the post office, they tell us; who knows what’s in the brown-paper packages? But we know from America’s noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China’s ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it’s perfectly possible to track content.

It’s technically possible for ISPs to track connections and protocols (but not necessarily content).  However, there are several problems with his comparison:

1. The Post Office is also technically capable of monitoring the packages it processes; is Bono in favor of opening every piece of mail sent through the postal system on the off-chance an envelope contains child pornography?  I certainly hope not!  There’s a reason the post office doesn’t open packages.
2. It’s only technically possible to track unencrypted content.  It’s not feasible.  The trouble is, the solution isn’t to track it – it’s to identify what it is, and if it meets some arbitrary definition of “infringing”, to block it.  There could be no recourse for accidentally blocked connections – it wouldn’t be feasible.  That’s essentially arbitrary censorship.
3. Attempting to implement the system would be prohibitively expensive.  Customers won’t want to pay for it; media companies won’t either.  That leaves either the ISPs or the government shouldering the financial burden; either way, customers are going to end up footing the bill unwillingly.  This would end up being basically a mandatory “music tax” – and I can tell you right now, if they try this, they can be sure I’ll stop buying music to pay for the fees.  That won’t help their profit margin at all.
4. The trivial workaround for content filtering is encryption – it takes virtually no effort to enable SSL on peer-to-peer connections, but encryption makes content filtering irrelevant.  You can’t filter something you can’t read.

The problem then becomes (again as Ars points out) that would-be filterers will then begin filtering based on protocol rather than content.  That’s akin to trying to filter out swear words by banning the entire English language.  It doesn’t succeed at its goal (you can still swear in other languages), and it has huge, unpleasant side effects (we still need English).

In other words, if you block one protocol, another will pop up; and inevitably ISPs will find themselves blocking protocols that have many legitimate uses.  (World of Warcraft comes to mind; it uses peer-to-peer file transfers to speed up patch downloads.  This undoubtedly saves Blizzard gobs and gobs of money on server bandwidth.)

Now, I’ll admit; I didn’t actually read the rest of Bono’s article.  It’s a set of ten unrelated ideas, each independently digestible.  It happens that this one is the only one I care about.

So perhaps you can see why I said Bono is a complete moron – he points out a goal (”save the media industry”) ignoring the evidence that it doesn’t need saving, and then lays out a plan that will do far more damage to society than peer-to-peer ever did to media – not to mention that the plan wouldn’t even increase media companies’ revenue.  And to top it off, he makes a self-defeating comparison with the post office (unless he really is in favor of the post office opening our mail).

It’s almost like he doesn’t know how the internet works.

(If you didn’t read my comments on net neutrality a few months ago, it’s a closely related subject and you should read it now.)