Stop Spam Texts Discussion Area

SeminoleCAG

redux wrote: »

You'll be charged the so-called standard rate, which is either 10 or 12 pence.

O2 told me this morning that these SMS numbers (specifically 84433 in my case) are premium rate numbers and that the company receives revenue when someone texts back to opt out.

Does anyone know if that's correct? If so, I really don't understand the contractual basis on which the company is able to make money out of spam texts. Can anyone clarify?

Elizathealily

Hi All

I have recently got my daughter a mobile with virgin and after checker her bill for a few months noticed a £1.50 premium text received number 700035332 I have no idea what this is for and she doesn't know either. I have tried to send a message to say 'STOP' but get a reply its not correct. Is there anyway to bar receipt of these texts as I don't want her bill to start rocketing?

Help please

malcumms7898

SeminoleCAG wrote: »

O2 told me this morning that these SMS numbers (specifically 84433 in my case) are premium rate numbers and that the company receives revenue when someone texts back to opt out.

Does anyone know if that's correct? If so, I really don't understand the contractual basis on which the company is able to make money out of spam texts. Can anyone clarify?

I don't know if it costs to reply to opt out to them or not. It is pointless anyway, because once they have your number they will just keep spamming you from different phone numbers. The way I see it, if they send a message saying "you are owed compensation for you accident" then even if 99% of people ignore it, it only takes 1% of people to reply thinking it is genuine (because they have just had an accident) to make it worthwhile. I don't think they necessarily make money out of the text messages themselves.

grumbler

Elizathealily wrote: »

Hi All

I have recently got my daughter a mobile with virgin and after checker her bill for a few months noticed a £1.50 premium text received number 700035332 I have no idea what this is for and she doesn't know either. I have tried to send a message to say 'STOP' but get a reply its not correct. Is there anyway to bar receipt of these texts as I don't want her bill to start rocketing?

Help please

Are you sure that the text was received, not sent? AFAIK 0700 numbers are expensive to call and sent texts to, not to receive calls/texts from.

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/For-the-Public/Unsure-about-a-number-on-your-phone-bill.aspx

If it’s a premium rate text service the number will be a five or six-digit shortcode and will probably begin with 5, 6, 7 or 8.

Buzby

catmort wrote: »

The number to report spam texts to Three is 37726 (so add a 3 on the front, like you've already said to put an 8 on the front for Vodafone)

There is a BIG caveat to this. 3UK will NOT accept Spam text reports from anything other than a short code. If you are complaining about a number that commences +447xxxx, then you'll receive a text reply saying the number is invalid or that you have not provided a number (when you may well have).

You can only complain via the ICO (as TPS do not take any notice of spam texts).

IMPORTANT: do NOT under any circumstance send a STOP message to any number that is not a short code, as this is (a) charged, and (b) confirming a valid live mobile number and will be sold on as such.

studiofinn

Hi
I am getting lots of unsolicited sms texts. The number keeps chnaging how do i stop them. the numbers that have text me so far are
07909751536 07733180831 07827374680 07733394132 07553113462 07503390723
Thanks

FreddoFreddo

Wonders eh! I was getting them every few hours until a few days ago, when a company was fined £440k for this... Turned out it was the same one. I've been getting ones from "optical express" as well.

Used to get hourly phone calls until I registered with the TPS, I either didn't pick up or wound up the sod on the other end.

Thing is, I have two mobiles. The phone they've been calling and texting, I've never given out. Not even to friends. The only possible people that could know it are Virgin themselves.

Curious, is it not?

Kate_Long

Ugh. Recently I've had calls to my mobile that are from absolute random companies trying to sell me stuff, as well as PPI claim text messages.

Interestingly enough, my friend came from abroad last week, bought an O2 payg sim card and within two hours, they had a ppi claim text message. They don't even live in this country!

Aaron

FreddoFreddo wrote: »

Thing is, I have two mobiles. The phone they've been calling and texting, I've never given out. Not even to friends. The only possible people that could know it are Virgin themselves.

Curious, is it not?

Not really. I suspect telcos pay customer support workers, shop workers, data processing typists and so on the minimum wage (often below UK minimum as they're based abroad) and it's hardly a surprise that some of them will choose to supplement their income by illegally selling some customer data to marketing firms, is it?

Trouble is, all you can do is minimise the risk by buying from a retail mobile operator that pays its workers fairly. All of them have to share data with one of the big four network operators (O2, 3, EE or Vodafone) in order to get a service and the big four all offshore big time.

Isn't it a market failure that there's no Fairtrade-style network operator?

dizziblonde

FreddoFreddo wrote: »

Wonders eh! I was getting them every few hours until a few days ago, when a company was fined £440k for this... Turned out it was the same one. I've been getting ones from "optical express" as well.

Used to get hourly phone calls until I registered with the TPS, I either didn't pick up or wound up the sod on the other end.

Thing is, I have two mobiles. The phone they've been calling and texting, I've never given out. Not even to friends. The only possible people that could know it are Virgin themselves.

Curious, is it not?

I had utterly utterly terrible tele-marketing calls when I had a Virgin landline - we're talking 5 or 6 a day on a quiet day. Switched provider and switched number (was inconvenient and if it wasn't phone-spam central I would have transferred the number over but the amount of calls we were getting outweighed the inconvenience) and now all I get are the automatic dialler ones (and the flipping bank but I know how and why they have the number at least).

There's definitely something fishy afoot in Virgin country (gawd that sentence sounds soooo dodgy).