Refund for subscription service I never subscribed to?

Tirian

My reply 25 July 2015

Dear Dean,

As explained several times previously, the process you describe below emphatically does not constitute a valid legal contract, as it does not provide any means of verifying that I have agreed to anything.Lack of a response to unsolicited messages cannot in any circumstances be construed as an agreement to receive a service.

You suggest that this "service" has been subscribed to by "clicking" on a promotional banner. However you also identify that the phone I use is a touchscreen, meaning that there is no such thing as a "click". A user of such a phone can be expected to accidentally touch the screen numerous times in the course of any given day through normal usage.Therefore the "verification" process you describe is clearly inadequate to determine whether users have actually actively decided to subscribe to a service or not, as it does not require any active response.

As such B!Games has no grounds to assert that I did request such a service. The number of messages you have sent is irrelevant. The fact that I do not immediately respond to unsolicited texts is irrelevant (as you will be aware, responding to unsolicited texts can elicit further spam, therefore it is resonable not to do so).

I do not accept your offer of a part refund. I did not request your service and I am therefore rightfully due a full refund of all the fees which you have charged me without receiving any verification from myself that I did indeed request such a service.

Unless you confirm that you will provide a full refund, the matter will be pursued through the Small Claims Court resulting in the addition of the £25 Small Claims Court fee, and the statutory recompense for any time that I have to take off work in order to attend a hearing.

I would certainly look forward to the legal assessment both of your complaints and "investigation" process, and of your supposed means of 'verifying' whether or not someone has inadvertantly touched one of your "promotional banners" or not, both of which have rather glaring inadequacies.

In relation to this, I note that you have not responded to any of the points regarding contract law that I made in my previous correspondence on this matter.

Yours sincerely,

xxxxx

Tirian

Final response from B!games on 30 July offering a full refund, which I have accepted and received. This response is clearly a copy/paste job, as they have magically transformed the phone that I used from a Samsung S5 (correctly identified in their earlier messages) to an iPhone in this message (which I have never owned) - although since they are at this stage giving a full capitulation, they can afford to be sloppy even by their own low standards ...


Dear xxx xxx,

Thank you for your email the contents of which are duly noted.

Our records show that the mobile number provided, 07xxxxxxxxx subscribed to ourmobile WebApp B!Games by actively responding to one of our mobile internetpromotions using an iPhone handset on 16/04/2015.

Whilst we maintain that our processes and messages are clear and thesubscription was initiated as detailed in our previous email, furtherconsiderations have been made and on this occasion, we will refund the fullamount charged for this subscription totalling £15.00.

Refunds are processed through PayPal. You don’t need an existing PayPalaccount, an email will be sent from PayPal to [email address][/email] within 10 workingdays of you accepting the refund. The email will contain a link for you toclaim your refund of £15.00.


Kind Regards
B! WebApp Support

redux

Sorry but this is assuming the proportions of spam

People here gave you advice on how to solve this: contact the company, and if they don't respond go to Phonepayplus.

From your post a couple of weeks ago that seems to have worked.

So be satisfied with the result.

If everyone here posted copies of pages and pages of messages exchanged on the way to their result, things would be very tedious.

Do you want to hear my whole unended saga of a fine in an inadequately marked bus lane, where the council removed and later reinstated a sign, refused to give details when this happened, full copies of every letter or email? No.

I'm reporting this for the Forum Team to consider.

Tirian

redux wrote: »

I don't think we need full copies of every single message, thank you.

3 or 4 so far, and it starts to look like you might produce a dozen or so.

I think it is reasonable to demonstrate to those who are interested how to rebut the aggressive (and unfounded) efforts that this and other companies of the same ilk make to hang on to money they have obtained by inappropriate means.

As previous posts on the thread attest, this is not an isolated issue and there are people interested in the result of challenging these charges. Those who are not interested do not need to read ...

I'm also not entirely sure that you understand the concept of spam: this is all contained within a single thread that is dedicated to the issue concerned. Certainly happy for the forum team to consider this - but my view is that exposing the practices and arguments of predatory companies such as this is both helpful and well within the remit of these boards.

redux

Tirian wrote: »

I think it is reasonable to demonstrate to those who are interested how to rebut the aggressive (and unfounded) efforts that this and other companies of the same ilk make to hang on to money they have obtained by inappropriate means.

As previous posts on the thread attest, this is not an isolated issue and there are people interested in the result of challenging these charges. Those who are not interested do not need to read ...

I'm also not entirely sure that you understand the concept of spam: this is all contained within a single thread that is dedicated to the issue concerned. Certainly happy for the forum team to consider this - but my view is that exposing the practices and arguments of predatory companies such as this is both helpful and well within the remit of these boards.

You exposed the practice at the start.

You were given advice by forum members, and you say it has worked - the company agreed a refund and paid it.

That is sufficient: pragmatic advice here worked. We don't really need all the process details in between.

I said earlier today on an adjacent thread, don't click on the apparent x close button in a pop-up ad. Close the tab or use the back button, or if these are both blocked by the demand for a response close the browser.

But maybe that doesn't apply to your case.

Tirian

redux wrote: »

That is sufficient: pragmatic advice here worked. We don't really need all the process details in between.

You perhaps do not - lucky you. Others may. One earlier poster in the thread specifically asked for further info. I think we can just agree that we disagree on this, and let the forum team decide.

redux wrote: »

I said earlier today on an adjacent thread, don't click on the apparent x close button in a pop-up ad. Close the tab or use the back button, or if these are both blocked by the demand for a response close the browser.

But maybe that doesn't apply to your case.

In general I would not do that for a pop up ad for exactly the reasons you mention. The whole point here is that I simply have no idea what they allege that I 'clicked' to activate this thing (nor can they identify that apparently - just give a date, and IP address and type of device) - and it is in any case not sufficient grounds for them to deduce that someone has actively requested their services. As the correspondence shows, after being challenged on this particular point they gave in (although they may have had other reasons).

Newyorker

Have people received a full refund from this company. They are still at it today and I've discovered they have been taking money from my account. Can someone advise. I've emailed and they have offered £3.96 when they've taken nearly £120.

d123

Newyorker wrote: »

Have people received a full refund from this company. They are still at it today and I've discovered they have been taking money from my account. Can someone advise. I've emailed and they have offered £3.96 when they've taken nearly £120.

Why don't you read the very thread you've posted in?

Most of your questions have already been answered in it..