People who are not AT&T customer are discovering that they are being repeatedly assessed AT&T long-distance charges through their local phone by BellSouth, the company charged.

The problem was not confined to California.  The Florida Attorney General issued a consumer advisory warning telephone customers that AT&T long distance charges were improperly being added to local phone bills.

According to one person, who tried to closed their account with AT&T, AT&T continued to billed on their closed account anyways.  They tried to clear this up for 8 months but AT&T continued to billed them.

Part of the problem is with AT&T’s automated system that prevents callers from speaking with a live customer service representative and obstructing consumers from receiving refunds for the improper long distance charges.

The class action lawsuit was filed on August 15, 2003 and asserts claims against AT&T for unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business practices in violation of the California Unfair Competition Law, for unjust enrichment, and for money had and received.

According to the complaint, AT&T unlawfully bills some consumers who are not AT&T customers through their local phone bills, and AT&T’s computerized billing system continues to assess charges on phone lines not subscribed to AT&T long-distance service even though AT&T’s own records indicate that there is no AT&T call activity on the phone lines or that AT&T does not provide service to such lines.

• The average cell phone bill in June 2009 was $49.57, up more than a buck from June 2008;
• The average length of a voice call was just 2.03 minutes, shorter than any other year since the CTIA started keeping records in 1988;
• There are about 276,610,580 wireless subscribers in the U.S., up about 14 million from last year, and more than double the number in 2002;
• The various wireless carriers (or at least the ones who reported figures to the CTIA) raked in $151.2 billion in revenue from June 2009 to June 2008—again, more than double what they made in 2002.

But the biggest data reviewed was that in the US in the last 6 months, US citizen send an average of 4.1 billion messages each day.  That’s 11.7 text messages a day for every man, woman, and child in the country.  That is some cool ass statistics.