TroubleShooters: Cell phone scam

BRUNSWICK COUNTY — One Brunswick County father noticed an extra $20 charge on his son’s cell phone bill.

We found out a company called M-Qube put it on there. And it’s a company that’s currently under investigation.

Dale Geddings pays his son’s cell phone bill. But when he noticed a mysterious charge for $19.99 from a company called M-Qube he called his wireless provider.

Geddings said, “They acted like they were expecting a phone call from somebody, acted like they already heard this story before, been through it before and said we’ll immediately delete that and we’ll delete you from the service.”

Then Geddings found out it was a monthly subscription fee.

“I said, ‘what service?’ They said, ‘Well, you have subscribed to a service on your phone.’ I said, ‘not that I know of.’ So I spoke to my son Matthew about it and Matthew said, ‘I haven’t signed up for anything.”

IT turns out some of those free ringtones, horoscopes or jokes you sign up for actually enroll you into program that charges a monthly fee.

We discovered M-Qube has racked up a ton of complaints. On the better business bureau’s website, there are nearly 150 of them.

Geddings said, “There’s no identifier from M-Qube who exactly they’re paying. And all these complaints where in there, so I was like, maybe I’m not the only one suffering.”

And he’s not. The attorney general in Florida is investigating M-Qube. Our own attorney general, Roy Cooper, has also received some complaints about the company and he wants to know if there are more out there.

Cooper said, “We’re investigating this particular case and been able to help others….if this happens to you let us know, we want to go after companies that take advantage of people.”

And most importantly, do what Geddings did: call your cell phone provider and ask them to remove the charge.

According to several websites, there’s also been a class action lawsuit filed in Massachusetts against M-Qube.

If you’ve noticed a charge from M-Qube on your bill, and you didn’t sign up for any service, call Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office at 877-5-NOSCAM.