£1.50 text charge?????

njsb14

Interesting, I have just ported my number over to orange and I have just received a dubious text from 893 88 it said text back STOP to end the service, which I wont as I don't want to pay for that text. The message also contained a help number of 0870 063 1181 this number comes up with a company called Blue Stream Mobile http://www.blue-stream.biz

ICSTIS(PhonepayPlus) regulator has the number 89388 listed as a company called Sybase 365 with a contact number of 020 7648 5307

I contact Orange who have 89388 listed to a company called Falcon Mobile contact number 0871 236 3730 [EMAIL="help@falconmobile.net"]help@falconmobile.net[/EMAIL]

I will get onto Orange and ask them what is going on.

mike407

Hi,

How did you get on with Orange.
I'm on vodafone, recently (6 months ago) ported over from o2 contract but never received these messages whilst on o2 for 4 years.
Where do I stand on this, the messages are coming from 88181.

Cheers,

Mike

chuckles1066

mike407 wrote: »

Hi,

How did you get on with Orange.
I'm on vodafone, recently (6 months ago) ported over from o2 contract but never received these messages whilst on o2 for 4 years.
Where do I stand on this, the messages are coming from 88181.

Cheers,

Mike

Dialogue Communications Ltd
0871 700 2211
The Workstation
15 Paternoster Row
Sheffield
South Yorkshire
S1 2BX

Google maps shows this as a residential address (always a bad sign!)

Hootie19

Bit of an update.

My contract with Orange is for £25 a month. My bill, which I have just opened is £44.60 this month.

Looking at it, lo and behold, there are numerous texts charged from 84010. Only I haven't *received* these messages. Just been charged for them.

And my husband, who has now changed from orange to three, but ported his old number across, has discovered exactly the same thing. Texts from this number being charged for, but not received.

So what do I do now? Obviously my first port of call is with Orange today, but having replied with the Stop All message, and having been told that Orange were going to block them at their end, and I'm STILL, apparently, being charged for them - what recourse do I have?


Argh - having just looked at the bill in more details, these charges appear three times on my bill. Thre are text messages SENT as well as text messages received! Now no way on this earth would I have been sending the messages to them, so presumably there is some way they have cooked up whereby my phone is sending messages under it's own steam!

Further update - 8.15am I've just spoken to Orange, and the woman is adamant that I *have* sent these messages because it says so on the bill :mad: and that they will be chargeable. The best they have done is given me a phone number and an email address for dialogue. They don't open until 9am so I'm not going to be able to call them (not allowed personal calls at work) so I've emailed them. What do you reckon my chances are!? I'm thinking probably nil. I am going to leave Orange though - even if it does mean buying myself out of the remaining 5 months of my contract with them, as Mrs Not So Very Helpful at Orange told me.

Intasun32

Browntoa wrote: »

In August 2006, Dialogue Communications Ltd, 08717002211, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, South Yorkshire, S1 2BX were (by ICSTIS) found guilty of and fined for and barred from providing services to B4U who (inter alia) had sent unsolicited reverse charge SMS and lied about how its customers had “signed up” for the SMS.

Following the bar, Dialogue Communications Ltd continued the reverse charge SMS business on 84010, but are now using “information providers” "Gabriel Investments”, 08712316594.

Browntoa,

Dialogue Comms (804010) were also found guilty, yet again, of sending unsolicited reverse bill texts between 17 - 19 March 2007 by Icstis adjudication on 12.4.07, along with Moby Magic. I know this as I was one of their many victims and complaintants.

You may also find when dealing with these 'cowboys' that if you prove that you have never subscribed by means of your mobile phone invoice, they will tell you that you had subscribed online or by calling their 0870 number which you cannot prove you didn't. Thanks to Ofcom & Icstis, now PhonePayPlus, they do not have to keep any records of subscribers.

loboexe

I am Hootie19's partner in crime.

I called the Three help desk this morning about the text messages. Like Hootie, I am not actually getting any message to my phone and I am not sending any. So this scam however it works must be fraud at least as they are pretending to be me at some point and they must be hacking some system some where in order to do it.

I was given a number for Dialog Communications 08707002211 and called them. They were helpful-ish but would not accept that I was not doing something that would "sign up for" these massages but were willing to stop them, however they were not the user of this short code, that was one of their clients. So they said they would have to contact the "client" to get them stopped.

They told me the company that they were dealing with was called PNC and gave me a number 0870 707070. I called this number and surprise surprise they are not the holders of the short code 84010 it is one of their clients. I am currently waiting for them to call me back, I will give them a couple of hours and then chase.

In the mean time who can I report this fraud to ? the more the better.

loboexe

Replying to my own posts ....

Looking on the PhonepayPlus site there are a whole string of adjudications against this company most of the ending in a " Formal reprimand" Follow the link, then search for Dialog Communications..

http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/consumers/adjudications

How many do they need before somebody shuts them down :mad:

Is there any department of the police that investigates scams and fraud like this ?

reddwarf2002

Hootie19 wrote: »

Bit of an update.
Argh - having just looked at the bill in more details, these charges appear three times on my bill. Thre are text messages SENT as well as text messages received! Now no way on this earth would I have been sending the messages to them, so presumably there is some way they have cooked up whereby my phone is sending messages under it's own steam!

I know this might sound unhelpful and accusing but could there be any possibility that your teens are actually sending these messages as it is unthinkable that this company is able to hack into Orange's billing system and making it appear as a text has been sent?! It would also explain why you haven't been receiving the texts as kids being kids would delete the received text! I can understand the company being able to (scam you and) charge for the reverse text which would then get added by Orange on your bill as a RECEIVED text but I can't think of any way for the SENT text to be added by this company too.

Hootie19

Thank you reddwarf - no, there's no way it's my teens. They were my first thoughts, but some of these messages have been supposedly sent from my phone when it has been with me at work, so there's no way they could have. Plus, even though they can be breathtakingly dim at times (as can all teens, eh?) they wouldn't do it from both my husbands (loboexe above) phone and mine.

I an only think that my (well, our, now that MrHootie has joined!) STOP ALL message didn't reach its destination for some reason, and that when I spoke to Orange on 20 January and the young man said he would block the texts from his end, that he only blocked them from reaching my phone, and not from reaching my account.

It's quite scary to think that they can just carry on taking money from my account like that and I seem to have no recourse at all.

loboexe

Here is an update to what I have tracked down so far With addresses and phone numbers to help anybody else.

From my current provider (having moved from Orange now) I got the phone number of Dialog Communications 087007002211 and 08700790400. They basically passed the buck and only provide a service other companies that provide mobile services. They gave me the number of the company they say asked them to send me the service. A company called Invomo on 08448888500

I have written to Dialog requesting copies of any documents and system logs etc that they can provide relating to my phone and Hootie19's (my wife) phone and any personal details they hold on us. I have also requested that they remove out details from any database they hold and write to me that this is done or explain why they are unable to do this.

As a note they were not rude but did not go out of their way to help either and quoted the "it's not us guv, it's our customers" defense.

I called Invomo. They were a little more helpful took down my details and said they would look into it and call me back. I suspected I might be getting fobbed off but they did call me back. They are willing to send me copies of all the records they have of texts sent and received form our numbers but we first have to provide proof that we own the phones by sending in copied of the bills. I guess this is not an unreasonable request in todays terms but it will slow down any resolution.

They did "Blacklist" our phones for us on the spot and agree to send us confirmation in writing that that had been done. The address for them is,

The Coach House
Heywood House
Westbury
Wiltshire
BA13 4NA

They have a web site http://www.invomo.com
The lady I spoke to said the so called Game Credits that I had signed up for were from a company called Cat Games, she was unwilling to pass on the details for this without talking to her manager. I am going to call her back later to see if this has been approved.

In the mean time a Google search for Cat Games has reveled only one candidate but the numbers do not appear to be valid.

I would suggest that anybody else having problems with text services from 84010 contact Invomo also