Buongiorno - unapproved charges

Desertgirl

I've just in the last couple of weeks realised I've been charged for a good few months by this scam having never willingly signed up to anything. In the 11 years that I have had a mobile I've never signed up for additional services so I knew it was a scam. I emailed Buongiorno with my complaint and request for a refund however they replied that the were only willing to refund me the £3.96 that they had taken before they had supposedly sent me a confirmation message which I argue I never received. Having read all these threads I have replied with the following email, a mash up of the multiple templates on this thread, arguing their suggestion that I signed up to their services willingly and have once again demanded a full refund with. Thank you to all. I shall let you know if I receive any reply.


Dear Sir / Madam

I confirm that I have received your reply to my complaint.

In response I would like to argue your suggestion that I actively and willingly responded to one of your mobile internet promotions via my telephone using a ************** handset on 16/06/2014. In contest I suggest that instead, my details have been subscribed at random without my permission. I would like to know which mobile internet campaign re-directed me to your site. If I inadvertently clicked on a link to your website, it did not mean that I wanted to subscribe to your service. I did not agree to join BGames, in fact it appears that I was tricked into subscribing to a service I did not want or actively request.

I state once again that I have not willingly subscribed to your services or authorise any of your promotions. Although I have received text messages from your company I was until recently unaware that this was in relation to any service I had supposedly signed up to, instead I assumed it was one of a number of scams designed to access peoples telephone accounts by getting them to respond with the word STOP. It was only when I read the pages and pages of complaints by many others online who had found themselves also being charged unknowingly and unwillingly by your company, for services they had now been aware of, that I checked my own bills and found I had indeed been charged also.

Having done further research on your company I understand that you appear to use a loophole to subscribe random telephone numbers to your sevices by using certain apps and internet links without permission. I therefore request once again an immediate and full refund of all charges applied to date.

In addition I would like to state that I plan to take this complaint further and would like to know the name of the UK Government regulatory agency which governs your conduct. I will also be contacting Trading Standards and PhonepayPlus as there are many complaints from other Orange and t-mobile users. Please supply this information and confirm a refund without delay.

I look forward to hearing from you,

The_Sleeper

Update on my charge (4 posts up).

After the telephone call offer of 1 weeks goodwill gesture refund, then waiting weeks for customer services to offer me 50% goodwill refund after a "thorough investigation", I said no I want the lot back. I eventually got it all. They had no choice - they had absolutely no records of me signing up for their service.

I also had a go twice at EE customer services on the phone, I first felt a bit bad on this as the staff answering the phone didn't have a clue, but the only way this fraud business will be stopped is if the operators get the message and kick them off. No-one from EE bothered to get back to me.

What most annoys me over this scam is that their strategy of offering partial refunds will win against people who haven't got the time to hold out.

My own advice is that if you've been had, do not take anything other than a full refund and take every possible opportunity to waste this evil business's time and money through phone* and email. (*Check first - at the time I phoned them it was effectively a free UK number on my contract).

Good luck!

Skn

New (and livid!) member here.

You CAN be signed up without clicking anything! The sim in my mobile broadband box has no user function and yet, according to these scammers, visited an advert within an app (game) and managed to click to sign up. I had 5 x £1.50 charges within the space of an hour.

I'm a miserable sod, so I'm reporting to action fraud.

hardley

Just discovered I've been paying for this "service" since July.

Did online chat with EE querying unknown payments to "Other EE services - UK" & he gave me the number of Buongiorno UK Ltd & said I needed to ring them. I also asked him to put a block on in account charging but he said he couldn't as I also have mobile broadband?!

I gave them a call & after a protracted conversation with a South African sounding woman she denied that I hadn't requested the services but was willing to give me 2 options, 1. A refund straight away of 1 month or 2. I could email their refunds dept & request a full refund.

During the call she seemed to make a point of mumbling everytime she was giving me information & I had to ask several times to repeat the email address & I'm sure she gave me 3 different call ref numbers until I heard one in full!

The email address I was finally given is: refunds.uk@buongiorno.com, strange how they have a specific address for refunds!

Email response came through this morning offering a part refund, stating I would have received notification messages advising status of my account.

I've replied stating that if I receive messages from unknown sources or anything gaming or non business related the messages would be deleted without being read as they would be treated as malicious or spam.

I again reiterated my request for a full refund.

Another email advising they would be carrying out an investigation & would be in touch within 14 working days

AngryJIM

I too have become a victim of this scam, mine dates back to 13/07/2013 and like many other I received the texts but just assumed it was spam as I knew I had never joined any service.

My dispute with buongiorno is on-going having received the same first email as many others on here they offered me £3.96 which is laughable as they have taken over £120 off me through that length of time.

This is the last email I have received:

The findings of our investigations confirm an active response to one of our mobile internet promotions for our horoscope WebApp service, iFortune from xxxxxxxxxx using an Android handset, model number xxxxxxxxxxx on 13/07/2013.

An active response requires you to click on a promotional banner/ad, which causes your browser to redirect to a joining page that contains specific and clear information about iFortune. It explains that it is a subscription based service, the weekly costs, the promoter/service provider contact information and how to cancel the subscription. This information is provided in full on the joining page, along with a link to our full terms and conditions, so that a consumer can make an informed decision whether or not he/she wishes to purchase the service in question.
Once a decision to subscribe to the service is made, a live opt-in link e.g. ‘a button’ allows the user of the handset to make his/her intention known and initiate the subscription.

It is when the consumer clicks on the live opt-in link that their mobile number is subscribed, and this is how your mobile number is obtained. The dynamic I.P address recorded in our logs for this step is xx.xx.xxx.xxx.

In order to ensure that the decision to accept the offer is genuine and that the opt-in link had not been inadvertently clicked, our system sends a Welcome text message to you. The Welcome text messages includes; the web address to access the service, the price after the free trial, frequency of billing, our contact details and the means by which the subscription can be cancelled. With a free trial, billing does not take place until 24 hours after joining, so you were given the option to send STOP to the shortcode for up to 24 hours without incurring charges.
Our logs confirm that the above Welcome text message was sent to xxxxxxxxx and returned a delivered status on the 13/07/2013 around 18:32.

Reminder messages were sent by our system to xxxxxxxxxxxx on a monthly basis since the date of joining, notifying you that the subscription was active. These were sent to xxxxxxxxx on the following dates;
12/08/2013
11/09/2013
11/10/2013
10/11/2013
10/12/2013
09/01/2014
08/02/2014
10/03/2014
09/04/2014
09/05/2014
08/06/2014
08/07/2014
07/08/2014
06/09/2014
08/09/2014
06/10/2014
05/11/2014
05/12/2014
04/01/2015
03/02/2015
05/03/2015
04/04/2015
04/05/2015
05/05/2015
03/06/2015
03/07/2015
02/08/2015
01/09/2015
01/10/2015
31/10/2015
30/11/2015
10/12/2015

The monthly Reminder text messages include the web address to access the service, the price and billing frequency together with the means to unsubscribe at any time e.g. Send Stop to the shortcode. There is also a local rate customer care number provided on each occasion of a message being sent to you that you could use to contact us, if you had had any queries or concerns.
Our records confirm that the Welcome and Reminder messages were sent to xxxxxxxxxx, yet we’ve no record of instructions from you to cancel or query the subscription until you sent a request via email on 09/12/2015, accordingly the subscription was not cancelled and remained active until your request was processed.

Nevertheless, in the interest of maintaining good customer relations we offered to refund £62.37 and after reviewing this subscription we deem this to be an acceptable offer.

To accept this refund, please reply to this email.

Refunds are processed through PayPal. You don’t need an existing PayPal account, an email will be sent from PayPal to xxxxxxx@hotmail.com within 10 working days of you accepting the refund. The email will contain a link for you to claim your refund.
As of 10/12/2015 your number was removed from all services and added to a ‘block list’ to prevent further charges or interaction with our services.

We hope that this correspondence further clarifies the iFortune service, your subscription to it and our efforts to address your query in a thorough and expeditious manner.

Kind Regards,
B! WebApp Support

Now I feel kind of stupid for not realising this was going on for this length of time and only really noticed it as I am due an upgrade and was reviewing my bill, I have contacted EE who are not willing to help and have said my best bet is to contact phoneplayplus which I have also done along with reporting it to Ofcom in the hope it doesn't happen to others.

I am unsure where I really stand with this now, I am angry as I know I didn't join the service and there is no way I would have gone to their website.

Any advice would be appreciated as I'm wondering if this is the best offer I can hope for which I believe is around 50% of what I have paid them annoyingly.

The_Sleeper

Angry Jim,
Maybe too late to reply but this topic needs to be kept alive. The letter you posted is standard text. I got the same. It's well crafted to make you think it's your fault and the offer is fair. But it's not. Hold out for a full refund if you can, these scammers have nothing other than your mobile number.

DCFC79

Do people not check the monthly bills these days ?

The_Sleeper

DCFC79 -

In short, no! Or at least, enough people do not.

Why would you check your bill if you have never purchased anything? Our contracts with EE / O2 are quite clear after all.

And don't forget this scam business is clever at disguising it - a round £5 amount each month (was my plan £20 or £25?) and misleading texts playing on the fact that most people ignore them as spam.

And finally - even if you did look you might miss it: I found mine through a vague line item like 'EE Store' on the third page of my bill. I was amazed that EE customer support thought this was reasonable!

mobilejunkie

1) They should.

2) That presumably applies to every bill. It seems to judging by the people who appear on here complaining they hadn't notice money going out of their bank accouns for several years and how that's the fault of the people who took it (sometimes legitimately and sometimes not).Or perhaps they have NO gas, no electricity, no mortgage, no council tax, no mobile contracts, no landline, no telephone or any other kind of payments. Cardboard people who don't exist.

3) Relying on a contract lasting 12 or more likely 24 months and ignoring its terms and what is actually going out each month is absolute stupidity.

4) Obviously the "scammers" are at the opposite end of the scale to the cardboards.

5) If you're that blaise when you check something I'm not sure you'd be employed and might as well not bother checking in the first place.

The_Sleeper

mobilejunkie wrote: »

1) They should.

2) That presumably applies to every bill. It seems to judging by the people who appear on here complaining they hadn't notice money going out of their bank accouns for several years and how that's the fault of the people who took it (sometimes legitimately and sometimes not).Or perhaps they have NO gas, no electricity, no mortgage, no council tax, no mobile contracts, no landline, no telephone or any other kind of payments. Cardboard people who don't exist.

3) Relying on a contract lasting 12 or more likely 24 months and ignoring its terms and what is actually going out each month is absolute stupidity.

4) Obviously the "scammers" are at the opposite end of the scale to the cardboards.

5) If you're that blaise when you check something I'm not sure you'd be employed and might as well not bother checking in the first place.

What an astonishing post! This thread is about helping people who do not know what to do or what their rights are on a money issue - which, as you read, has been taken without consent - and you decide to pollute the advice and label everyone stupid unemployable idiots who do not exist. Thanks for that.