Telephone slamming is an illegal activity in which a person's phone service is changed without their permission. This issue became more noticeable after the telecommunications industry had fewer rules in the mid-1980s, especially during times when major companies competed by lowering prices. The term "slamming" was created by Mick Ahearn, a consumer marketing manager at AT&T in September 1987. He came up with the word because competitors could easily switch a customer's service from AT&T by falsely telling a phone company that the customer wanted to switch. This method allowed competitors to change a customer's long-distance service without permission, which was called a "slam dunk" because it was so simple. Over time, the term "slamming" became widely used to describe this practice.
Other similar practices include "merchant account slamming," where a business's payment system is changed to use a different company, and "domain slamming," where the company that manages a website's domain name is changed without permission.
Methods
In the United States, local phone companies have been responsible for giving telephone numbers to people and businesses since AT&T was broken up into local and long-distance companies as part of efforts to stop monopolies. If someone wanted to change their long-distance carrier, they would send the request to the local phone company, which would make the change. In many cases of slamming, a worker at a phone company (often a telemarketer calling potential customers) would submit a request to switch carriers to the local phone company without the customer’s permission.
In the United Kingdom, landline phone services were only offered by BT until 1984, when the industry was broken up, and more companies began providing landline services. British customers have reported similar problems, saying their landline services were changed to new providers without their approval.
Slamming can also happen when someone is asked to take a survey or enter a contest. These contests or surveys are often general, and participants may not notice that the "small print" in the entry form allows the company to switch their phone service to another provider.
Another common method used to cause slamming involves slammers pretending to be representatives of the customer’s current phone company. They might claim they can offer better rates or a free upgrade to the customer’s service. Slammers using this method might even send bills that look like they come from the customer’s current provider, making it seem like an upgrade instead of an unauthorized change.
Slamming originally meant switching to a different long-distance carrier without the customer’s permission. However, as the US market has grown and customers have had more choices for both local and long-distance services over the past 10 years, slamming has also occurred for those services.
This problem has not only affected landlines. In Britain, the communications regulator, OFCOM, has received complaints about mobile phone contracts being renewed without customers’ consent.
Slamming has also happened for secondary services, such as voicemail, or when mobile phone companies use customer data to switch users to landline services provided by their own companies.
In the US, some wireless companies have changed from offering unlimited data plans to tiered data plans. This change has led to a new type of slamming, where customers’ unlimited data plans are switched to metered plans without their knowledge. This can occur when a customer makes a different change, such as adding another phone line to their account.
Prevention
Most US local phone companies have taken steps to stop slamming. Customers can ask for a "freeze" on their long-distance and local services. This means no changes will happen unless the local company gets a written request from the service provider.
Industry rules tell customers to check their phone bills and ask about any charges they don’t recognize. Some companies that slam add their charges to bills customers expect from their usual carrier. Bills must show the name and logo of any company whose charges appear on the bill. (See "cramming" for more about other types of charges that might appear.)
Because of many complaints and laws passed by states and the federal government, companies must send any verbal request to change services to a third-party verification service. This service records the call and checks if the person truly wants to switch to a new long-distance carrier or change their service.
Customers are told to say "no" to telemarketers if they don’t want to change their services or don’t know the company or its services.
Customers who want to avoid slamming can ask the telemarketer for a website address to research the service themselves instead of agreeing to buy it over the phone.
In the United Kingdom, the government group OFCOM regulates the telecom industry. OFCOM can take action against companies that mis-sell services or slam. These companies may be fined up to 10% of their income. In 2007, these rules were expanded to include mis-selling of voice and broadband services using full Local Loop Unbundling (LLU) technology.
British customers who think they were slammed can report the issue to Ofcom. Ofcom says it cannot investigate individual cases, but complaints may lead to investigations and action.
In the Republic of Ireland, the communications regulator, COMREG, oversees all telecom activities and can help settle disputes between telecom companies. COMREG was created after Telecom Éireann was privatized and became Eircom.
Slamming is illegal in Australia, and several groups enforce this rule. Laws at the state and federal levels make it illegal to charge for unsolicited goods or services. The Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (www.tio.com.au) usually requires the company that caused the issue to undo the transfer and remove all charges. The transfer process should include checks, such as the account holder’s birthdate, but some transfers happen without this information.