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It may not be pretty, but the Federal Communications Commission has added a portal to its FCC.gov website to help consumers avoid the pain of “the appearance, like April dandelions, of sudden and unexpected overage charges on their wireless bills,” according to William D. Freedman, Deputy Chief, Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau.
The commission said 1 in 6, or about 30 million customers, had experienced unexpected charges on their wireless plans. In 2010, the FCC said, it received about 800 complaints from consumers, some with outrageous bills in the thousands of dollars.
Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports, which collected more than 47,000 signatures of readers who backed the FCC’s efforts to create an alert system, has been working with the FCC on the web portal.
Wireless carriers that provide 97 percent of service to United States customers agreed in October to voluntarily alert customers if they were unknowingly exceeding their plan limits for data, voice, text, or when traveling abroad, incurred international roaming charges, Freedman said. They did so, he added, to avoid proposed FCC rules requiring such notification.
Under the agreement, by October, wireless carriers will notify customers if they are going over plan limits in two of four areas: data, voice, text and international roaming. By April 2013, the wireless providers must provide alerts in all four service areas. The FCC portal will update its table showing which carrier is providing what alert.
