AT&T customers who have seen mysterious charges for ringtones and other subject matter show up on their cell-phone bills will be eligible for refunds as part of the settlement of a group of class-action lawsuits, a lawyer for the class said Monday.

Customers will able to claim refunds for spurious charges that arised on up to three of their monthly bills amoung Jan. 1, 2004, and May 30, 2008, according to Jay Edelson, lead counsel for the plaintiffs.

It is the first nationwide settlement by the business of third-party composition, Edelson said. AT&T spokesman Marty Richter said he knew of no other similar settlement.

Edelson’s firm has filed similar suits against Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel Corp. and T-Mobile USA.

Vendors of ringtones and daily text-message services with horoscopes and jokes solicit customers to sign up by entering their phone numbers on Web sites or by sending text messages. The charges, which can be hidden or poorly explained, show up later on

cell-phone bills, often as recurring charges.

The cell-phone carrier keeps some of the fee and passes the rest to the composition provider.

Sixteen class-action suits that are part of the settlement alleged that AT&T should have been more careful in vetting the services. AT&T did not confess wrongdoing.

The settlement shows the company “really does want to fix that problem and not benefit from any of the unscrupulous third-party instances out there,” Edelson said.

The company now requires customers who sign up for third-party services with recurring fees to confirm by replying to a text note. It additionally requires the subject matter providers to send monthly reminders with directions on how to unsubscribe from such services.

“AT&T has taken aggressive action to put industry-leading safeguards in place to protect our customers from unauthorized changes from third parties. We believe that settlement is consistent with that approach,” Richter said.

Richter had no…

Orginal post by Top Tech News