Anyone advise me re this scam please?

SuziQ

I have been confused to find the balance dissapearing on my payg over the last few weeks and have finally realised it is due to text messages arriving from

http://venturygames.co.uk/index.aspx

these have been swallowing up my credit! I have gone back into my history and found a competition entry which I don't know about (I have 2 'big' children) it was to a competition with the text number 87771 with the word 'money'.

I am hoping I have blocked them now and have emailed the company but have no idea what the competition was or that there was this 'sting'-I have lost almost £30!

I know I seem like a bit of a plonker,but I don't gamble-at all-and have found this a bit of a shock really!

Dr_DiNg_DoNg

Could one of the kids have been using your mobile to gamble?, you can deposit in a way that lets the casino take money off your phone.

malc1603

I would ring up your mobile phone providers customer services and see if they can do anything about it or at least tell you where the credits gone.

weegie.geek

Why's this here?

point3

Report them to Phonepayplus:

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/default.aspx

I did this for another 'provider' who pretended to offer support for a free software download and got charged for several premium rate texts @ £3 each. :mad:

Phonepayplus investigated and succeeded in revoking the operator's licence to run a premium rate number, but sadly the scammers just moved over to Paypal and Phonepayplus have no say in what Paypal does.

They cannot offer compensation directly, but gave me the contact details of the scammer to request a refund cheque - quite frankly I wasn't going to give the scammer more info and so just wrote off the loss.

phingers

Just reply STOP to one of their messages, then take action as per the previous post.

tartantipster

Delete them immediately or any other unrecognized text-merchant.

Alias_Omega

The big key here is that its PAYG, so if you dont credit the phone, you cant be charged for anything.

Tesco sell PAYG sim cards for £1.24, you could use this until you have found out who is sending the texts, then ring the 0870 number. Probably no one will answer this number, so it will not stop for a bit.

This should be in the mobile phones forum i guess.

weegie.geek

tartantipster wrote: »

Delete them immediately or any other unrecognized text-merchant.

That won't help, you get charged for receiving them.

tartantipster

weegie.geek wrote: »

That won't help, you get charged for receiving them.

That's absurd. They (no-one) can know that you have received a text they have sent you unless you 'open-it' (I don't mean reply), at which point, I don't know, it may incur a trick-fee. So delete without even open/viewing it.

Mouseman

The message is reported as delivered when it's been just that - DELIVERED. Regardless of if you open it, delete it, forward it, reply to it... If you have a mobile, turn delivery reports on and send a message to another phone in the vicinity, you'll see what I mean

Thus you can be charged as soon as it hits your operator's message centre pretty much.