cramming
n. The practice of adding an unexpected fee onto a person's phone bill.
Other Forms
Examples
2000
Wisconsin consumers complained less about slamming, the unauthorized switching of phone service to another provider, and cramming, the unauthorized addition of services to an account.
—Lee Bergquist, “Wisconsin Utilities Draw a Record 5,416 Complaints,” The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, August 03, 2000
1997
The next big thing in telephone scams is cramming — unauthorized phone charges, often for services customers never receive, from companies they've never heard of.
—Jennifer Files & Alan Goldstein, “Tech Bits,” The Dallas Morning News, November 24, 1997
1997 (earliest)
Call it 'cramming,' 'whamming' or 'super-slamming.' Call it what you will, but Lorraine Parker calls it a ripoff. Parker was shocked recently to find charges crammed deep into her phone bill for services she says she didn't authorize.
—Cam Simpson, “New phone scam: 'Cramming' your bill,” Chicago Sun-Times, October 17, 1997
Notes
Of the three terms listed in the earliest citation, the usage marketplace seems to have decreed cramming the winner over whamming and super-slamming. That makes linguistic sense because this practice involves stuffing bogus charges onto otherwise-innocent phone bills, and stuff and cram are synonymous verbs.
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