Remember the days when customers claimed they were slammed? If you’re old like me, you remember that slamming is the illegal practice of submitting or executing a change in a consumer’s wireline telephone service provider for local, local toll, or long-distance service without their permission.
Slamming emerged four decades ago, a side-effect of the Commission’s then newly adopted equal access requirements, which facilitated competition in the long-distance service market following the divestiture of AT&T. With competition for long distance service came incentives for unscrupulous long-distance providers to switch consumers’ long-distance carriers without their consent by submitting a change request to the consumers’ local telephone companies. (Draft FCC Docket 17-169, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at para. 4).
To combat slamming, the FCC provided consumers with methods to use to demonstrate they were slammed. Customers could provide either (1) a Letter of Agency; (2) an electronic authorization; (3) a state-enacted verification procedure applicable to intrastate preferred carrier change orders only; or (4) a third-party verification. Consumers could also protect themselves from an unauthorized change by freezing their choice of carriers, a process known as a preferred interexchange carrier (PIC) freeze.
That was forty years ago. Today, technology has changed. People rarely have separate local and long-distance service providers. Moreover, most people use their cellphones to make and receive calls, and the era of wireline calling is slowly ending. Wireless calls and the providers facilitating them are not subject to the slamming rules. The result is that there has not been a slamming complaint since 2021.
Slamming was not the only problem wireline consumers faced. They also dealt with cramming.
Cramming typically involved third parties placing unauthorized charges on consumer telephone bills at a time when wireline billing carriers allowed third parties to place their charges on the carrier’s bills. As the Commission described in the 2012 Cramming Order, carriers were compensated for third party billing and received additional compensation from third parties for each consumer complaint or inquiry they handled regarding unauthorized charges. Specifically, pursuant to a contract, the billing aggregator or vendor would provide the carrier with the consumer’s telephone number, the amount to be charged, requests that the charge be placed on the consumer’s telephone bill, and proof of consumer authorization was not generally provided to or required by the carrier. The vendor would compensate the billing aggregator and the carrier for their services. The carrier also was compensated by the vendor or the billing aggregator for the billing-and-collection service it provided. (Id., para. 8).
In 1999, to help consumers spot slamming and cramming, the agency adopted Truth-in-Billing rules that required that bills must: (1) be clearly organized, clearly identify the service provider associated with each charge, and highlight any new provider (i.e., one that did not bill the customer for service during the last billing cycle); (2) contain brief, clear, and non-misleading descriptions of the charges that appear on the bill; and (3) contain clear and conspicuous disclosure of any information that the consumer might need to make inquiries about, or to contest, charges on the bill, including toll-free numbers.
As the years passed, the Commission added many specific Truth-in-Billing rules. Now with slamming and cramming complaints disappearing, it seeks to determine if these rules are still needed?
At its upcoming July 25, 2025, meeting, the FCC is expected to release a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in Docket 17-169 which asks the industry to comment on the following issues:
Whether slamming and billing concerns remain significant consumer problems considering marketplace changes since the Commission adopted the rules and whether the rules remain necessary to protect consumers?
Should the Commission unify the rules into a single rule section if the record reflects that rules remain necessary?
For slamming, should it adopt a single, streamlined rule that ensures consumer protection against unauthorized switches of their chosen providers while eliminating the current prescriptive requirements that may inhibit consumer choice?
For Truth-in-Billing, should the Commission eliminate several likely outdated sections of the rules, including those that address bygone practices such as placement of third-party charges on carrier bills. And should it retain the core protections that ensure bills are clear and easy to understand?
Industry comments on the Notice will be due 30 days after it appears in the Federal Register. Reply comments will be due 30 days after comments are due.