Don't trustbubble. They are text spammers

lucyinthesky

BEWARE!!!

I recently tried a new service to save my mobile numbers. As soon as I had signed up to their free trial and saved all my numbers, I was horrified to find out that everyone in my address book (400 people) had received a text as if from me telling them that I had recommended trustbubble's service.

Also, outrageously, although it says that this service is free, when you register your phone, you are sent a text which costs you £1.50.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY OR WEBSITE AND DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THEIR SERVICE. :mad:

RadoJo

From the Trustbubble.com website terms and conditions:

'8. Fees
Bubble Accounts are provided on a subscription basis. Bubble will charge the Subscriber various fees dependant upon the level of Service selected inclusive of United Kingdom VAT. All fees are payable in advance.
A single security registration fee of £1.50 applies to both the Trial and Monthly back up plans. The Annual plan does not invoke this fee. If you are a contract customer this will appear on your phone bill and if you are a pre-pay user, this fee will be deducted to from your available credit.
Subscribers to the trial account plan who fail to upgrade to either a full monthly or annual account plan within 30 days of activation will invoke service restrictions. These include but are not restricted to, viewing stored contact numbers.'

and section 14 : Warranties and disclaimers

'Recommend a friend
Recommend a friend is our SMS referral system. It is a mandatory part of the trial plan and helps subsidise the cost of maintaining your free bubble account. It is also available voluntarily, with a 50% discount, via our Recommend a friend annual plan. You represent and warrant to bubble, that you have an existing business or personal relationship with each "friend referred" and that it is your genuine and reasonable opinion that each friend would wish to receive details pertaining to bubble and its services. By authorising bubble to contact your friends, you assume full responsibility and confirm that you are requesting and authorising bubble to contact your friends on your behalf.
Recommend a friend is NOT spam and the information provided is used solely for the purpose of recommending bubble, via a single text message to the mobile numbers contained within your contacts list.'

I admit that their terms and conditions form quite a long document, but there they are, for anyone to see. Companies NEVER offer something for nothing - at least it was only £1.50 - I am sure there are plenty of people who would have loved to have learned their lesson about reading terms and conditions so cheaply!

lucyinthesky

Thank you for the reply. I did read the T & Cs and privacy statement, however, I did not actually recommend any friends and for them to assume that it is fair game to use my entire address book is disgusting and must surely breach the data protection act. Usually, when you recommend a friend on a website, you are asked to provide 5-10 email addresses or numbers. This was not even an option.

It is not enough to simply hide dodgy elements of your service in your terms and conditions. If they do not think they are doing anything other than running a ligitimate business, why are they not informing users that they will be spamming all their contacts.

hollydays

As already stated,its all covered by the T& cs-you agreed to it.Dont know about the 1.50 though.

RadoJo

I can see why you are annoyed, but it does say that 'recommending a friend is mandatory' and in the table of 'benefits' elsewhere on the site it shows that this is something they do. I agree, it does make it sound like something you will be aware of before it happens, but then I suppose there isn't much incentive for them to store all those numbers without even an attempt at contacting people to market their services.

I do wonder how you can be considered to 'recommend' them before you have really used the service though.

Dr_Drake_Remoray

lucyinthesky wrote: »

BEWARE!!!

I recently tried a new service to save my mobile numbers. As soon as I had signed up to their free trial and saved all my numbers, I was horrified to find out that everyone in my address book (400 people) had received a text as if from me telling them that I had recommended trustbubble's service.

Also, outrageously, although it says that this service is free, when you register your phone, you are sent a text which costs you £1.50.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY OR WEBSITE AND DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THEIR SERVICE. :mad:

Lucy, LETS BE FAIR! The recommend a friend option is listed on both the signup plans page AND the T's and C's. The £1.50 is CLEARLY listed on the second page of the registration page. You must have missed them all I guess.

Out of curiousity and as I have just upgraded my phone, I tried bubble and it is actually VERY good! (although, after reading this, I only had a few numbers on the phone I tried). After trying it, and looking around the site, I then phoned their customer services (Yes! They actually HAD ONE!), and they told me the recommend a friend was not spam. It is only sent out once and they paid for it.

I also asked them about the £1.50 and they informed me it was a one off registration fee and helps ensure a decent level of service for free customers. I have checked out other companies who provide this kind of service and some them offer their product free but you have to upgrade and pay up to £30 for any kind of customer services.

My friend, who got the recommend text message said it was not a "misleading" message, it simply invites you to visit the website. She also tried it, and had a problem connecting her phone. She was astounded when, within 30 minutes and unprompted, bubble support called her and helped her sort out her phone.


For me, £1.50 is not a lot to trial a service that actually works and can give you expert help on the phone if needed. I actually upgraded and paid £10 for the annual service, which is STILL really cheap, because they can support up to five phones on one account which is very useful to me as I have more than one phone. This has upset my little brother, who i normally bribes me out of £30 just to move the numbers from phone to phone. (Maybe he will now post on here too)

I find this site great, but I do find some people come here when they have a bad experience and lets face it we all do have them sometimes. But never when they have a good ones. Thats why I like to try things myself before I make judgements. I think its unfair to judge bubble under the section of Ripoffs, I myself will post my feelings about bubble on a more appropriate part of MSE.

freejack

Yes i too am familiar with this Company who run this service and if you check the history a small firm who make lots of people unhappy by using their mobile phone. To spam your addressbook is surely out of order, backing up your mobile with this Company, what is their disclaimer about personal access to your private data? mmmm im sure there are some good guys out there with reputable products?

lucyinthesky wrote: »

BEWARE!!!

I recently tried a new service to save my mobile numbers. As soon as I had signed up to their free trial and saved all my numbers, I was horrified to find out that everyone in my address book (400 people) had received a text as if from me telling them that I had recommended trustbubble's service.

Also, outrageously, although it says that this service is free, when you register your phone, you are sent a text which costs you £1.50.

DO NOT TRUST THIS COMPANY OR WEBSITE AND DO NOT SIGN UP FOR THEIR SERVICE. :mad:

stugib

As we're in the Warnings board I'll also draw your attention to the reply I posted in Dr Drake's x-post to the mobile's board...

Seems that as well as charging £1.50 for the 'free' service they'll also charge you £25 to get your data back if you don't sign up for their paid service within 30 days.

jason300

Ha ha

This is very interesting that i should find this here. I joined up for this service last week. I actually received a message from my mate about it. So i am guessing it was sent as a recommend a friend message. But it was good for me as i was looking for something like this anyway...

But I signup up for the £10 a year option as i have 2 phones that that i needed to backup. But my friends never got any auto recommend sms from me ????. So having checked the T and C it seems like only the trial version sends out the messages that you are talking about...

I can see how the recommend thing might annoy people but it was actually good for me... maybe i am the only one ??? but i have told my mates about it anyway...


jay

stugib

Thanks for signing up to MSE especially to make two posts praising trustbubble jason :rolleyes:

But seeing as this is a Money Saving site, how is this supposed to be better than at least two other sites that have been mentioned on this site over the last few months, that do this for free?