Press Releases

Five More Companies That Charged Vermonters’ Phone Bills Settle With Attorney General

CONTACT: Elliot Burg, Assistant Attorney General, (802) 828-5507

October 20, 2011

Five companies that charged local consumers and businesses on their telephone bills for services to which many of the affected Vermonters say they did not consent have entered into settlements with the Vermont Attorney General’s Office, bringing to 13 the number of such settlements since mid-March of 2011. Together, the five firms billed over 3,600 Vermont consumers and businesses over $280,000, all of which must be refunded, if that has not already been done. In addition, each will pay the State of Vermont $10,000 in penalties and costs.

Attorney General William H. Sorrell said that the settlements are part of his Office’s continuing crackdown on “cramming,” or the placing of unauthorized inadequately-noticed charges on local telephone bills. “Most Vermonters have no idea that they can be billed for non-telephone services by their local phone carriers; we won’t allow other companies to take advantage of that,” he added.

In all five cases, the charging company failed to comply fully with a Vermont statute requiring that notice be mailed to consumers and businesses before charges appear on their local telephone bills. That law has now been strengthened to ban most such charges outright, the first such law in the country.

In addition, one of the companies used what the Attorney General’s Office considered to be a deceptive telemarketing script, which stated that the purpose of the call was not to sell a service (which it was), but to update the prospective customer’s online listing.

The settling companies are:

aDigitalVillage.com, LLC, based in Lake Mary, Florida, which charged over $43,000 to 749 Vermont consumers for a webhosting and email service between 2007 and 2010.

More Yellow Pages, Inc., based in Sunrise, Florida, which charged almost $57,000 to over 500 Vermont businesses for online business listings between 2008 and 2009.

Personal Voice, Inc., based in Clearwater, Florida, which charged over $49,900 to 578 Vermont consumers for a voicemail service between 2004 and 2008.

Voice Mail Services, Ltd., based in Las Vegas, Nevada, which charged over $89,000 to 1,144 Vermont businesses for a voicemail service between 2006 and 2010.

Voicenet Telephone, LLC, based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, which charged over $57,000 to 648 Vermont consumers for a long distance calling plan between 2005 and 2010.

To date, the Attorney General’s initiative has resulted in 13 settlements providing for more than $890,000 in refunds to over 9,400 Vermont consumers and businesses.

For more information on the settlements, call the Attorney General’s Office at (802) 828-5507.