Unsolicited texts costing £1.50

cymrumam

Just had my sons phone bill and as he has unlimited texts, phone and internet I was surprised to find the bill far more than normal. Having checked a number of premium rate texts have been sent to the phone at £1.50 a time several times over 3 separate weeks. Virgin have been very unhelpful and said just tell my son not to put his phone number anywhere on the internet.
Surely this is illegal otherwise everyone would be at it - you could make millions with this scam - the number was 700034487. Any suggestions or advice gratefully received

viv0147

What are Premium Texts?
Premium texts (or Premium SMS) are a paid service that you subscribe to so you can receive regular updates or messages to your phone. For example, you might receive:
game downloads
ringtones
sports results
How do I stop receiving these texts?
The quickest way is to reply to the premium text message with the word STOP. This should unsubscribe you from the service. If you're not sure who exactly is sending you the premium texts, you can do a short code search on ComReg's website. As long as you have the 5 digit number (53XXX) you can find out the service provider name and contact details. The ComReg Phonesmart website also gives more details on how to unsubscribe from a premium service.
What about text alerts?
Text alerts are a similar type of subscription text service that Vodafone offers. Vodafone has a wide range of text alerts you can subscribe to. For a complete list and to subscribe or unsubscribe with ease, register with My Vodafone and update your contact options. You can subscribe and unsubscribe to text alerts within My Vodafone.

Zanderman

Google it! A search on 700034487 comes up with several of the generic 'who calls me?' sites, and it's clear from those that this is a system responding to some comp that's been entered - and the charge per text received is something to do with that.

What to do? I don't know - but there is some advice on those sites e.g. http://www.unknownphone.com/search.php?num=700034487 and http://whocallsme.com/Phone-Number.aspx/700034487 and https://support.vodafone.ie/system/selfservice.controller?CONFIGURATION=1003&PARTITION_ID=1&CMD=VIEW_ARTICLE&LANGUAGE=en&COUNTRY=ie&USERTYPE=1&ARTICLE_ID=2048

ballyblack

Sometimes reply STOP doesn't work. I am on Tesco, rang them and they put a block on all Premium content. It worked

ste_wilko

Have a look at the Information Commissioner's Office website for help and guidance on what to do: http://ico.org.uk/for_the_public/topic_specific_guides/marketing/texts

According to one of the links Zanderman has provided, the originator is a Company called IMI Mobile. You can email them here: contactus@imimobile.com

cymrumam

Thanks all - Virgin were not interested no way of blocking premium numbers but have contacted the company and stopped anymore