AT&T To Pay Out $88 Million in Refunds Over Bogus Charges Starting Today

By Jeff John RobertsEditor, Finance and Crypto
Jeff John RobertsEditor, Finance and Crypto

Jeff John Roberts is the Finance and Crypto editor at Fortune, overseeing coverage of the blockchain and how technology is changing finance.

Photograph by Getty Images

Phone giant AT&T got caught padding consumers’ bills with unwanted services such as ringtones and special text messages, leading to a settlement in 2014 with the Federal Trade Commission. Starting today, the company will begin paying out the money—$31 per customer on average.

According to the FTC, AT&T will credit consumers’ phone bills and, in the case of 300,000 former customers, will start sending out checks. The agency said in a blog post that over 2.7 million people are due to collect a total of $88 million.

The payments relate to a scheme known as “cramming” in which AT&T added charges of up to $9.99 per month—without customer consent, in many cases—for extra services like “wallpaper” for their phone screens.

The FTC did not provide a way for customers to see whether they are among those who will get a refund, but it did provide a phone number for consumers to obtain additional information.

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The payouts came after AT&T and the FTC reached a record $105 million settlement in 2014. AT&T will pay around $88 million of that to consumers with the rest of the money going to state and federal fines.

“AT&T received a high volume of complaints related to mobile cramming prior to the FTC and other federal and state agencies stepping in on consumers’ behalf,” FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. “I am pleased that consumers are now being refunded their money and that AT&T has changed its mobile billing practices.”

The cramming scheme, which can also involve charges for things like horoscope messages, is not unique to AT&T. In recent years, the Federal Communications Commission has also reached big settlements with the other three major phone carriers—Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile—over the practice.

AT&T, meanwhile, remains busy with regulators on another front as it seeks to win approval for its proposed $85 million merger with Time Warner.