Has anyone being successful with an Ask Bongo Refund

kettricken · 16 September 2013 at 9:56AM

Please do not reply if you are going to question or make statements that relate to my decision to get a contract mobile for my daughter. This is my decision and not why I am posting.

Has anyone been successful in claiming money back from Ask Bongo?
This service has been accessed by someone under 16 and without the bill payers permission. In fact all you do is close a box that asks you to agree. Then anyone can access the service.

Apparently you can Ask Bongo anything this service knows everything. Shame Bongo did not know the person that was being sent the £2.50 SMS was under 16!!!

I have complained about the company via Phonepayplus and am hoping that eventually the money will be refunded.

IMO this site is aimed at under 16 year olds, those over would be able to see through the hype and do google searches free of charge for any info they wanted.

JAK12 · 26 November 2013 at 7:10PM

Hi, I currently have the same problem - I have complained & Bongo have offered to refund the costs via PayPal within 7 days

I sent an email to [EMAIL="compliance@199bongo.com"]compliance@199bongo.com[/EMAIL],
Please accept this email as an official complaint & request for immediate reimbursement of costs in relation to texts to/from mobile number 07XXX XXX XXX in November 2013
The user of this mobile number is a minor (aged 12) without permission from the bill payer to access this 'service'.
Please confirm receipt of this email & advise when, and how, the refund of costs will be made

I received a reply the next day immediately offering to refund the cost via PayPal, we have exchanged further emails to agree the amount & Paypal details

In parrallell I have raised an offical complaint about Bongo via PhonePayPlus,(google payphoneplus number checker 66668) there is a further link on this page to the online complaint reporting

craft74 · 23 February 2015 at 3:52PM

I am hoping you can get a refund as my son (aged 12) has just run up a £25 bill from this text scam.
I have used the above email in my message to BONGO. this scam site needs to be stopped!

dealer_wins · 23 February 2015 at 8:17PM

Its not a scam, its kids being allowed to play with adult toys!

BadBehaviour · 24 February 2015 at 3:05AM

It's not a scam. As long as they inform you that you need to be 16+ and have the bill payer's permission they are not doing anything illegal.

It's your duty as a parent and bill payer to ensure that your children don't go and click they are 16+ etc when they're not and that they don't waste money.

After all, as you said, how can they know what age is the actual person asking the question?

deadseamud · 14 February 2017 at 3:22PM

{Edited by Forum Team}

There's always somebody isn't there, saying it's your duty as a parent, you shouldn't let your children do this or that, it's you fault etc. Rubbish, these people either don't have children themselves or like sounding like pompous idiots.

Meanwhile, in the real world...

I have just received a refund in PayPal for all the £2.50 texts my son racked up after responding to Ask Bongo advertisement on a YouTube page visited primarily by children. They are shameless and have already been fined for their business practices.

As stated earlier, to get a refund just send an email like so:

an email to compliance@199bongo.com,
Please accept this email as an official complaint & request for immediate reimbursement of costs in relation to texts to/from mobile number 07XXX XXX XXX in November 2013
The user of this mobile number is a minor (aged 12) without permission from the bill payer to access this 'service'.
Please confirm receipt of this email & advise when, and how, the refund of costs will be made

It worked and I got refund in a matter of hours. They know they are scammers.

Martin50 · 14 February 2017 at 5:07PM

The under-16 thing is almost incidental: if you can 'approve' simply by closing a box which pops up then this isn't an opt-in service in any sense of the term. There are lots of dodgy extra-cost services around and most of them aren't specifically targeted at under-16s. And I would never assume that simply by closing or ignoring a box I could tacitly have signed up for a paid service (cue somebody telling me that perhaps nobody over 35 should be let loose with a smartphone because it's a young person's toy)

AndyPix · 14 February 2017 at 5:47PM

No body has signed up for anything.
And you dont have to accept/close any box to send a text message to this service

You send a text to a shortcode and receive a premium rate mobile terminated (MT) SMS as a result.

The website is irrelevent as the service exists seperate from this.
The website is just an advertising platform.

Valuable lesson for your offspring.
Sending SMS to shortcodes often costs money.

Take it out of their pocket money and move on

BTW it's not a scam, it is providing exactly what it says it will.
It is however absolutely garbage

sarahlrich · 17 June 2017 at 4:10PM

I have just applied for a refund. My 12 year old went on it online - he put his name in and was charged £2.50. Then he put his friends name in - charged again.
Then he was contacted by a woman who said she lived in the same town as him. He asked "who are you" - charged for incoming and outgoing.

sarahlrich · 17 June 2017 at 4:11PM

£30 in total

willihe_2 · 25 June 2017 at 8:19PM

Thanks to helpful posts - using the template suggested, I received a reply to my email claiming refund within 24 hours. It took about 10 days to receive the PayPal payment.

As others have said, this is deliberately targeted at young users though You Tube and websites. They wouldn't be so prompt to agree to refunds if they were on the right side of the law.

But I do take the point about kids needing to learn and be alert to unscrupulous operators, so I did take my son to the bank and withdraw the amount he had spent on these stupid MSN message, and give it to me to pay his bill and unlock his account, which fortunately had a low credit limit of £20 (negotiated down from the default £50 with the network provider). Guess I might need to slip it back into his savings account now that I've got the refund...

Thanks again for helpful posts.

Has anyone being successful with an Ask Bongo Refund

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