Spotify - Chargeable content billed twice when tethering

abssorb

I just wanted to share this. I have two phones, a work phone on Vodafone, and a personal phone on three.

I have a £9.99 spotify subscription through Vodafone, and I use it on my work phone, on desktops etc.

I saw on my December bill from Three, a charge for £9.99 for spotify.... :think:

Payforit usage (for digital content and services outside of 3)
Payforit is a secure way to buy products and services. You'll see each charge listed here.

Payforit GBP9.99 Spotify Helpline 08081202341

Now I only use my three personal smartphone for calls and even though it's a smartphone I have no apps installed, definitely no spotify, not even pre-installed.

When I spoke to Three, they said that I have used spotify through the phone, and that I have to talk to spotify about it.

We narrowed it down to this.....
8th Dec I was working in a location with no Vodafone data coverage, so I tethered to my personal phone to use its data.

So it transpires that Three are somehow "sniffing" the data services used through their SIM card, and somehow this goes automatically to Spotify who then apply a charge - all without my agreement.


Edit: It's actually the other way around. The service provider applies the charge from their end, which goes through a payment house that passes on the charge to your mobile phone number - all without explicit consent. In this case because there are two mobile numbers in the network chain -they both get charged!


I have to wait until Monday to unravel this mess, but for now Three can only set my credit limit to zero to prevent any chargeable content.

I confess I'm annoyed that this is even possible and it seems like a job for Ofcom. Has anyone encountered this before?

abssorb

EDIT: This is not a false alarm any more


Digging further, it seems that the charges originate from BOKU, and they go back further than 8th Dec so it wasn't that event - false alarm re the tethering thing that the Three guy suggested then. Phew!


It's possible to use the Boku website to disable future payments on a particular mobile number.

https://customer.boku.com/transactions

ripplyuk

That does sound strange.

I'm probably missing something here but doesn't a Spotify subscription cover all your devices anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference even if you had used it on (or through) your other mobile?

They shouldn't be charging you twice. It sounds like Spotify are responsible for sorting it out.

Frozen_up_north

abssorb wrote: »

So it transpires that Three are somehow "sniffing" the data services used through their SIM card, and somehow this goes automatically to Spotify who then apply a charge - all without my agreement.

You can stop 3 and Vodafone "sniffing" your data by using a VPN to encrypt your data. Some are free. I use CyberGhost. Although the billing might not be related to that.

You can check that it's working by going to https://www.whatismyip.com and checking you aren't appearing as a Three or Voda user.

abssorb

I finally managed to resolve this today. It has been a right PITA.
Three blame Payforit (trading name of BOKU), Boku blame Spotify and Three, spotify blame Boku and Three.

Round and round and round.

Three finally agreed to refund the charge today and I have a quite an in-depth chat with a 2nd line support guy.

He confirmed again what the previous advisor said. This can happen.


If you are using a mobile device (A) which is tethered to another mobile device (B) - and you using mobile A to agree to a service which is handled via a mobile phone bill payment house (like Spotify)... It's quite likely the charge will be applied to BOTH mobiles!

This should not happen. Three and other networks are capable of automatically determining when tethering* is happening, so they are monitoring traffic and should be able to prevent this.

The workaround, is to block the wifi sharing mobile number (B above) on all payment sites. Three have no facility for me to block all mobile payments.
I did this on Boku and it worked, but how many other payment houses are there?

So if I have a MiFi, or I share my network connection - I must make an effort to block payments myself.


To block payments on https://www.boku.com/ (aka PayForIt), create an account and add your number:
https://boku.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/231600927-I-want-to-block-my-phone-number-to-prevent-future-payments




* Tethering (sharing your internet connection over wifi) is nothing special and is how local networking functions "out of the box". Where mobile providers monitor and make a separate charge for this, they make extra effort to find out that you are doing it. In essence they hobble part of the LAN deliberately in order to make it look like it's a feature.