T-Mobile CEO Legere Lashes Out Over FTC Lawsuit
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) isn't happy with T-Mobile and, surprise, looks like T-Mobile isn't too happy with the FTC either. T-Mobile's eccentric CEO and president John Legere, who initially responded to the charges with some modicum of poise, has gone back to his usual ways of combating those against him and his company.
The FTC lawsuit filed last Tuesday in Seattle alleges that T-Mobile has skimmed hundreds of millions of dollars from customers through "bogus charges" involving premium SMS services.
"It's wrong for a company like T-Mobile to profit from scams against its customers when there were clear warning signs the charges it was imposing were fraudulent," said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez. "The FTC's goal is to ensure that T-Mobile repays all its customers for these crammed charges."
Naturally, this didn't sit well with T-Mobile or its chief executive, who wrote a response the same day.
"We have seen the complaint filed today by the FTC and find it to be unfounded and without merit. In fact T-Mobile stopped billing for these Premium SMS services last year and launched a proactive program to provide full refunds for any customer that feels that they were charged for something they did not want," reads a T-Mobile blog post by Legere.
That tone, however, soon changed. Legere re-entered the fray later in the week, this time with a vengeance and plenty of exclamation points (and even some caps to boot).
"The FTC certainly did a good job of sensationalizing their story and their news at the expense of both T-Mobile's reputation and mine. My frontline employees are upset about it and so am I. I considered leaving it alone, but I have to set the record straight," Legere wrote in a follow-up piece.
Legere then went on to point out that all four major carriers (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile) denounced the charging of premium SMS services known as "cramming" late last year.
"Despite the exaggeration of the FTC, this was neither a big nor important business for us, and their financial claims are incredibly overstated," he said.
He followed up with his second point: that as long as he is CEO, T-Mobile customers will not get billed for anything they don't want.
Lastly, Legere highlighted T-Mobile's cramming refund program. T-Mobile announced in early June that it has started the healing process by beginning to reach out to customers affected by cramming and that it will be launching a website sometime in July to allow customers to get easy access to their rightful refunds.
T-Mobile customers who believe they might have been affected by unwarranted cramming charges can find out here how to identify and rectify the issue.
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