We’re used to seeing phone bill surcharges every month, but some phone bill surcharges may actually be unfair or deceptive, allowing phone companies to pocket extra money.

Phone, wireless, and other kinds of bills typically come with a wide range of surcharges, fees, and taxes. But certain phone bill surcharges may be used for company profit.

One example of such a surcharge is the emergency 911 fees surcharge—a charge phone companies are required to include in order to cover costs of local emergency dispatch services.

However, recent reports suggest that some phone companies may be using this required surcharge for personal profit, taking a larger amount out away from dispatch services than they are supposed to.

This may leave such emergency dispatch services in the lurch without the necessary funding.

In some cases, reports indicate, phone companies may just be failing to add the emergency services surcharge required by the local government onto customers’ phone bills.

While this approach may not directly impact a customer, the lack of funding for emergency dispatch can put an entire community at risk.

A whistleblower lawsuit has already been filed against several major phone companies over excessive or unfair phone bill surcharges, including AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint, alleging that they were purposely and deceptively overcharging the government for telephone services.

The whistleblower involved in this lawsuit was a rate analyst and billing auditor with first-hand knowledge of these deceitful surcharge practices.

Another lawsuit alleged that certain telecom companies intentionally under-billed its customers by tens of millions that would have gone to emergency dispatch services.

Phone companies may use this deceptive under-billing technique to make their services cheaper than those of competitors’, but at the same time cut off necessary emergency 911 dispatch funds to the local government.

The whistleblower lawsuit claims the companies actively misrepresented how much of what they collected through phone bill surcharges that would actually go toward emergency dispatch services.

Filing a Lawsuit Over Deceptive Phone Bill Surcharges

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requires that phone companies provide their customers with bills, including all phone bill surcharges, that are easy to understand and “provide clear, factual, plain language descriptions of services for which you are being billed.”

However, some companies may take advantage of phone bill surcharges to deceive or trick customers into paying too much on their bill or too little to their government.

Since it is difficult for customers to know if they are being charged unfair or deceptive phone bill surcharges, it is important for any phone company employees with knowledge of such unfair practices to come forward as a whistleblower.

If you are an employee of a phone company that may be keeping the emergency 911 fees of its customers for itself, you may be able to come forward as a whistleblower.

Whistleblowers are employees and former employees of a company with insider information about fraudulent behavior from within the company, either against the government or consumers. Filing a whistleblower lawsuit could call attention to missing emergency 911 fees as well as result in a substantial monetary award.

Because of the important role of a whistleblower in exposing fraud and deceit by a company, the whistleblower is usually awarded a substantial chunk of any whistleblower lawsuit settlement money. This is often between 15 and 30 percent.

If you have first-hand knowledge that a phone company may be failing to turn over the required money for emergency calls, you may be able to bring a phone bill whistleblower lawsuit.