grazzup

maverick09

Even i had been victim of Grazzup. Unfortunately they did not sent a SMS on 1st and 2nd deduction. So there was no way i could identify who is deducting this money. Thankfully they send a SMS on 3rd deduction and immediately sent SMS for stopping this service. Overall they have deducted 30 £ from my payg account.

However i am very much worried how did they get hold of my number?

There are chances that you sooner or later they will catch my other numbers as well ?

Why they did not send a notice SMS to me on 1st and 2nd deductions?


I sent a email to your customer care then got this reply.

---

Thank you for your email.
On the 2011-06-29 we have received a request to start the Grazzup subscription service on your mobile phone.

The mobile number was entered on our online advert where it states that by entering the competition you will subscribe Grazzup subscription service that costs 10 GBP per week. After putting the number we have sent you a text message with the information about the subscription and a PIN code.

On the 2011-06-29 18:48:37 the service has been confirmed by you by entering the pin code online. The messages you have now been charged for are for the service we provided to. We can anyway confirm that your mobile phone number is unsubscribed from our service since the date.

---

I never received a PIN or any message from Grazzup on my cell so they clearly falsifying the fact. I have raised a complaint with PhonePayPlus , although that was not much helpful as they first asked me to talk to this company for any clarification.

maverick09

Tonytonytony wrote: »

It looks like I am going to get my money back. Today I received the following email

Dear Tony,

Thank you for contacting us.

It is unfortunate that there has been a mistake in our system and as a gesture of goodwill we will refund the amount of 10£ .
In order to process your refund we will need your full name and postal address.When we have received this information we will send you another email with a a barcode. You will need to print out this barcode and go to your local postal office to collect your refund.

Many thanks

Best Regards
Customer Care

I am a tad dubious about giving my full details to scammers but hey a tenner is a tenner.

I have to say the advice from the so called regulator, phonepayplus, was not encouraging. They suggested I contact the company with phone records to prove I had not sent the subscibing text in the first place. As has been posted previously getting pay as you go bill details costs and would likely be more than my original loss.

What is worrying in all this is that someone managed to take money from my phone with no authority whatsoever on my part. All was was doing was quietly watching TV with my phone by my side. I know folks will say you must have clicked on some link or other but I can assure you I did absolutely nothing other than have a phone, have it switched on and have credit in my account.

Other posts in this thread indicate the same thing has happened to other people so I suspect the 'mistake in our system' at Grazzup is something more sinister.

Did you actually get your money back from grazzup?

AnthonyAnthonyAnthony

Hi Maverick (forgive the name change I forgot my previous password)

I did indeed get my money back so it is worth persevering.

After sending my details I got a further email...

Dear Tony,
Thank you for your email.
You refund is now in process. Notice it can take up to 6 weeks to recieve the refund.
Please let us know if you have any further questions.
Best Regards
Customer Service

I was a tad miffed that someone who was able to take my money, in the blink of an eye, was going to take so long to give it back.

After about three weeks the email duly arrived with a PDF attachment containing the barcode. I them took it to my post office who handed over a tenner.

The curious thing is that the refund came from a company called Gogogy. I did a Google search for Gogogy and came up with loads of post from folks who had (you guessed yet?) money taken off their phones without authorization. Some of the complaints are even on other threads in this forum!!!

After reading a few, the common theme is that the scamming method works in exactly the same way as you and I described it. What is dissappointing is that many of the posters replying to those who have lost money blame those who have been scammed for being foolish enough to give our mobile number out or have clicked on some dodgy site somewhere. This is galling as I know I did no such thing, my phone is for my use and I have no interaction with it on the web and have not put contact details on any web site other than O2 when I bought the SIM.

It is obvious that Grazzup and Gogogy are the same or closely related, otherwise why would Gogogy meet Grazzups debts? My best guess is that they are using some software version of the old autodialers that marketing companies used to use. No doubt cleverer people than me will be able to tell me how this might work, but it is very worrying that someone out there is able to pick our virtual pockets of real money.

On the subject of people cleverer than myself I trust when those who maintain, as in this thread and others on this site and elsewhere, that the original mysterious deduction was somehow of my own doing do post to let us know when it happens to them.

And BTW good luck in getting your money back.

Tony

texranger

cflarry wrote: »

From what I have been told by this company its a advert online.
You have to be over 18 to subscribe. I do supervise my sons viewing on the internet. Somehow this company have used a pop up, I have
no knowledge how he was able to subscribe, unless I can recreate the pop up and sequence of events.

so why dont you use a pop up blocker on your PC as most of the pop up adverts will never look like adverts they will be something like " your PC has a virus click here" so anyone seeing these will think oh i better click this, especially a 11 yr old who thinks they have infected the PC with a virus.

Buziosuk

The people saying serves you right are missing the point. The same happened to my son (aged 18) and he never signed up for anything . In fact we have proven that he could not have. Grazzup are somehow hacking into accounts and signing up people without their knowledge. We did not know for 7 weeks after which they sent a text saying 'you are signed up' and by then they had already taken £70.

arcon5

Buziosuk wrote: »

The people saying serves you right are missing the point. The same happened to my son (aged 18) and he never signed up for anything . In fact we have proven that he could not have. Grazzup are somehow hacking into accounts and signing up people without their knowledge. We did not know for 7 weeks after which they sent a text saying 'you are signed up' and by then they had already taken £70.

How can you prove it?