My phone bill was larger than usual. By about $33. Two services that I did not recognize and had never requested were on my phone bill, billed by two different companies other than AT&T. I had been "crammed".

AT&T initially told me that they couldn't do anything about it, that I had to contact the scam operators that had crammed me in the first place, that they were not responsible for the billing and could do nothing about it. (I did not know at the time I called that this was a lie, that they are legally required to participate in correcting the billing). Deeply unhappy at being told to talk to scam laundering operators like "Enhanced Services Billing, Inc" (ESBI) and "ILD Teleservices, Inc" (ILD), I called them. ESBI told me that I had to contact the company that they were representing ("NETWORK ASSURANCE, INC"). I asked for a supervisor, and after half an hour of holding (welcome to the "rubber room") the supervisor claimed to submit a credit and put a block on further charges. ILD dropped my call while "getting the credit" but when I called back also claim to have credited my account (they did not try to get me to call "FAMILYCONTACT911.COM, LLC"). ILD also suggested that I provide their credit confirmation number to AT&T.

I called AT&T again. This time they said that the first representative had actually reversed the charges (contrary to what she told me, but yay, anyway). They did not offer to block third party billing. I asked why third party bill blocking had been removed from my account, and they claimed to add it back. However, they also claimed that the only thing they could legally block was third party billing solely by phone number; that anyone who could provide my home billing address (as if that were private information!) will still be able to do third party billing and that they can't stop it. (This made me glad that I had refused to divulge my billing address to ILD when requested, though; they initially repeatedly claimed that they needed it to issue the credit when they didn't need it in the first place to put the charge on the account.)

I told them to annotate my account that no third party billing is authorized.

AT&T should be able to recognize known crammers like "NETWORK ASSURANCE, INC" and "FAMILYCONTACT911.COM, LLC". This should be automatic, just like services like Google Mail blocking spam email by default.

I'm also seriously considering joining the ranks of those who have given up a landline, just to avoid being crammed again.