CIO — It's bad enough that the big wireless companies all-too-often provide substandard service at a premium price. And it's even worse, when they pad their bills with "crammed" charges or "gotchas" that siphon money from our wallets a drip a time. But now we've leaned that Verizon (VZ) billed customers tens of millions of dollars for services they never ordered.

[For more advice on protecting your wallet from overcharges, see CIO.com's recent article, How to Avoid Mobile Phone Bill Shock: 5 Fixes . ]

The company has admitted its mistake (but not, as far as I can discern, apologized) and will be giving customers credits on their bills of $2 to $6, and sending checks to former customers in October and November. The refunds could total as much $90 million, though the final amount has not yet been set.

End of story? I don't think so. It took Verizon a couple of years to come to grips with this and the company seemed to ignore ongoing customer complaints about incorrect charges. That makes me suspicious; and now it appears that the FCC is suspicious as well.

Michele Ellison, the chief of the FCC's enforcement bureau, said in a prepared statement that the agency was "gratified to see the repayment, but for millions of Americans it's a day late and a $1.99 short. Questions remain as to why it took Verizon two years to reimburse its customers and why greater disclosure and other corrective actions did not come much, much sooner." The agency is still investigating the matter and could levy fines or order a change in practices.

Charges Follow One Woman After Death

The issue apparently came to light after a consumer columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer noticed some odd charges on her phone bill and wrote about it, prompting a flood of comments from readers complaining about the same issue. (Hey, those "dead tree journalists" can still be mighty useful.)

The newspaper reported that customers were erroneously billed $1.99 per month for Internet usage on their cell phones—even people who had not used their phones. In some cases, the phones were not Internet-capable, were broken or, in one case, sat idle in the home of a woman who had died a few weeks earlier.

One of the most annoying problems was caused by the design of some Verizon phones that made it all too easy to accidentally hit a button that takes the user to the Web. Even when the function is immediately cancelled, the user is hit with a $1.99 data charge. (To be fair, published accounts say that some AT&T phones are also poorly designed, sticking users with unwanted data fees.)

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