Buongiorno - unapproved charges

DCFC79

Jeffsmum79 wrote: »

I've been being charged by this company for over 2 years and used the template in this thread and got a full refund of £97. What a scam!

I'm astonished how you didn't notice it at an earlier point.

Adamai

This subject has been covered on other threads but I believe it warrants its own one because I, unlike many others on the forums, am not being offered a full refund by Buongiorno. They are only willing to give me half of what I believe they owe me which is completely unfair and I will do whatever it takes to get a full refund. Any advice on next steps would be greatly appreciated - so far I have been in touch with EE/Orange, Buongiorno themselves, PhonePayPlus and I am awaiting a response from the European Commission via the Online Dispute Resolution website.

Please read the story so far below:

Buongiorno has been charging me £6 per month via my mobile phone bill (currently with EE, previously with Orange) since June 2012 for a celebrity gossip text message that I never knowingly signed up for. They allege that I clicked on one of their banners on my mobile, therefore subscribing me to this service.

How it works is that someone clicks on their banner, they receive a free text message saying:
(FreeMsg) Welcome to the hottest celeb gossip app! With muchgossip.co.uk ur 1st week is free, then only £1.50/wk until you reply stop. Help: 02087724859

If they don’t receive a response then you are charged each month for this service.

Now, I do remember receiving this message, and subsequent ones, but the reason I never responded to them in any way is that I believed them to be spam / phishing messages and that it would be a security risk to my phone to do so. Much like email spam, I believed that the best course of action would be to ignore them.

As a result I have been charged every month since June 2012 until I was made aware of my “subscription” by someone at EE in March 2016 and cancelled the service.

I complained to EE who then referred me onto Buogiorno to directly deal with the issue. They offered me roughly half the money that I believe they owe me - £147 and that is their final offer.

From there I have been in touch with PhonepayPlus, the regulatory body for premium rate services. After looking into my case they believe that Buongiorno have done nothing wrong but I do not accept that they have properly considered my side of the argument. They say that they cannot help me any further seeing as Buongiorno have offered me half the money as a refund but I do not see why I should accept a refund of only half the amount.

If Buongiorno have done nothing wrong in the eyes of the law then I believe that the law needs to change, because:

Their subscription method is seriously flawed and unfair.

Their messages are misleading (for example their use of the word “free” when you are actually paying them for the service).

Their messages and communications look like “spam”.

Jon_01

You didn't check your EE bill for 4 years!

I'm sorry, but you have to take some of the blame.

Martin50

By all means look through my earlier posts, and my experience with a similar unauthorised service, to see how easily you could get signed up unwittingly. Perhaps the most uncomfortable aspect of the whole thing is being told by my phone network's customer service people that I must have signed up for the service intentionally - in effect I was being accused of lying by a company which I'd been a customer of for 17 years.

There are immense flaws in the way that these premium rate services operate, and the regulatory framework is hopelessly loose. There is now a code of practice adopted by the industry which is supposed to offer clarity in billing. Nevertheless Vodafone at least has detailed tariff information on its website but doesn't even mention the existence the direct billing of premium rate services. As you say, the conventional wisdom on receiving unsolicited texts is usually that the recipient should ignore them. The phone networks would doubtless argue that it's not their problem if premium rate services use them unscrupulously but that seems a formulation to get them off the hook. If they are serious about clarity then they have a responsibility to ensure that the premium rate services have robust processes to ensure that users only sign up for them intentionally.

That means at least one of three things should happen (1) phone companies to bar premium rate services by default and only to lift the bar when the user asks them to, (2) a proper opt-in system so that you would need to respond to the acknowledgement text before being signed in (much as I needed to act on an email before first signing in to MSE), (3) a captcha or equivalent to confirm that you are not a robot before proceeding. All of these are well-proven and established approaches and none of them should deter anybody who really wants to sign up for the service. Without these, I cannot see how the industry as a whole is acting in accordance with its code of practice.

Unfortunately you may have weakened your personal case by allowing this to go on for so long unnoticed but this is one area where I hope that putting pressure on OFCOM and others might lead to more effective regulation and a better deal for consumers.

bcrabtree

I'm another one that got scammed - for the last three months, for a total of £47.50, being charged for text coming in to me, not for any texts or calls that I have made.

And trying to escape from this scam trap is far from easy (only discovered this yesterday and am awaiting a reply about a refund from the root offender, Moonlight Mobile).

My first step was to have an online chat with my service provider (O2) - finding a real number to call with a human on the end seemed impossible.

The person I chatted to was helpful as she could be (or was allowed to be) but she could do nothing apart from give me a phone number to call - 03330030581 - for an "IMI competition service" - and advise me to "send the text STOP to the number/ short code from which you are getting these text".

She also said, "I can see that you have been charged for a premium service, however I would just like to inform you that these services are third party services and O2 just serves as a billing platform for these services."

In other words, it might be a scam but O2 takes its cut, so tough.

I called that number (a standard-rate number, not free, not premium) but it took about three calls before I was able to speak to someone (menu system seems to be deliberately confusing and unhelpful).

I moaned and moaned - told no chance of a refund from them. Was told they're only the host for Moonlight Mobile - the scammers [my description, of course, not theirs] - and that I'd have to contact them directly. Number given was 020 3318 5356.

Called that number and eventually got to speak to someone. I moaned and moaned (lost my cool a bit) but was told the only thing I could do is send an email (to [EMAIL="admin@moonlightmobile.co.uk"]admin@moonlightmobile.co.uk[/EMAIL]) and should get a reply within 48hrs (didn't say if that was working hours - which would equate to six days) or calendar hours (two days) and I didn't have the wit to ask.

As has been made clear by others in this thread, this is a scam and it's a scam that earns money for three companies - your mobile phone provider (O2 in my case); the host, ("IMI competition service" in my case); and the actual scammer itself, Moonlight Mobile (in my case).

The mobile host and "middle-man" say, in effect, that it's not their problem (while raking in their cuts) and the scammer sits three removed from the phone user and protected by the other two companies in the chain (really, that is what they're doing by accepting no responsibility, as well as protecting their own illicit revenues).

Someone does need to apply pressure to get this sorted out - and I hope Martin et al will be at the forefront, though why the regulatory authorities should even need chasing about this seems to me to be a dereliction of duty on their behalf, if, as I assume, their job is to protect consumers and stop the bad guys.

As someone here has already said, the natural reaction to spam texts is NOT to read it diligently and to reply but, instead, to delete the text and bar that number - which, of course, gives the scammers a free hand (which they know only too well, of course).

Since I'm here at the moment, thought I'd also say that I'm astonished that no one has yet taken Microsoft to task in law for tricking people into installing Windows 10 (what ever happened to USA class-action suits?).

Bob Crabtree

Adamai

Thanks Martin50 and bcrabtree. Do either of you have any advice for next steps? Regardless of whether or not I get a full refund, I would like to apply pressure wherever I can to get this scam stopped. As I mentioned, I am already awaiting a response from the European Commission. Is there anyone else that should be informed / pressured? Martin50 mentioned Ofcom but I can't see any way of directly contacting them on their website - they seem to want to refer me to PhonepayPlus, who I have already contacted to no avail.

bcrabtree

Adamai, if you have the option open to you (I did, I recall, when I called the middle-man) block all premium-rate texts. For everyone, I'd recommended contacting your mobile service supplier and requesting that ALL premium-rate texts be blocked.

Bob

Martin50

Your mobile provider should be able to block premium rate texts and services. If not, they are in clear contravention of the code of practice (search mobile broadband group code of practice) that they have signed up to. Come to think of it the mobile broadband group might be worth approaching in terms of changing things, if only because in practice mobile operators' adherence to the code seems to be patchy in the extreme. For example, in my case when I first received an acknowledgement text from a premium rate service I queried it with my network's customer services and was told (incorrectly) not to reply to it.

Phonepayplus is an industry body for the premium rate sector and, it seems, a terrible advert for self-regulation. Ofcom delegates regulation of this sector to phonepayplus and I would hope it's possible for them to take responsibility, and appreciate that premium rate regulation just isn't working. None of us is going to bring this about single-handedly however. I'm tempted to write to my MP as one way to raise the issue.

bcrabtree

I tried my own advice and spoke to O2 - online chat and real phone - and got the same response to my request for them to block all incoming premium texts:

As these are "third party services, we are not able to block this [sic] services"

Seemingly, though, not all mobile operators are as money-grubbing as 02. On Vodafone's site, one page, headed, "Premium rate SMS FAQ" has a link that allegedly lets you block all premium-rate SMS messages.

Others might like to comment about that and the policy of different mobile phone providers.

Which? magazine says on a page on its site headed "How do I stop unwanted premium rate texts?" [Section4]:

"You can ask your phone network provider to bar all premium rate calls or texts from being made from your phone.

Simply contact your provider and ask them to set this bar for your phone number. "

True or not, I don't know but I'm hoping for a call back from the magazine tomorrow morning to clarify the situation. The person I spoke to at Which? a little while ago said something like, "Well it wouldn't be there if it wasn't right". Clearly, a glass-half-full kind of a person.

What I do know is that I seem to be able to block all such SMSs that come via IMI by calling 03330030581 - or rather, that was an option I just took when I called.

What I don't know is whether IMI will actually do what I ask or whether there are also other middle-men on whom the scammers piggy-back and I would need to contact all of them in the same way.

Anyone have any ideas/comments?

Bob
=========
Missed that last comment, spent too long typing!

Here's an extract from that code of practice Martin50 mentioned and to which O2 and rest of five big names appear to be signatories:

Premium Rate Services (PRS5) and In-app purchases
The signatories of this Code, where applicable, will:
• continue to develop and promote a ‘charge to bill’ payment mechanism that gives customers certainty and control over how much they will pay for value added services, such as PRS and In-app purchases, or provide access to such services.
• Provide customers with barring capabilities to enable customers to protect against unauthorised or inadvertent access to premium rate voice services

So, yes, seemingly, O2 are not conforming, judging by what they are saying in on-line chat (which I do have recorded) and on the phone (which I don't).

Martin50

Bob - this may well be an issue with the customer services people you spoke to not knowing about the possibility rather than O2 being unable to do it. The culture across the industry seems to be one where customer services people are more likely just to tell you that something's impossible than to make the effort to find out.