Tap2Bill mobile billing scam

rhino789123

Hi MSE, first time posting here...

I wanted to draw attention to an issue I had with my phone bill (Three) recently and ask if anyone else has encountered anything similar and if you managed to do anything about it.

So last month I saw an extra charge for £9 on my bill. When I phoned them to query this, it turns out that apparently this is for some kind of subscription to an adult website. Obviously I haven't signed up for anything like this.

I asked them to block any further payments and cancel whatever subscription it was. This was on Dec 31st. I realised at this point that I had a text message received a text about this subscription but assumed it was a scam or phishing message because there was no way to reply other than texting STOP to a number that my phone warned me would be premium rate. I simply ignored it, assuming it was a generic scam. My phone company kindly refunded me the £9 that had been charged, said they would try to cancel the contract and gave me the contact number from the bill (which I called but didn't get through to anyone). It turns out the billing company is called Tap2Bill.

Now today (Jan 10th), I get my latest phone bill, which has another £36 from the same company. Once again, I call my phone company about this, the guy I speak to manages to get hold of someone from Tap2Bill and puts me on the line with him. I explain that I definitely did not sign up to any kind of subscription and could they please cancel it. His response is that they have a multi step sign up process and there is no possible way that I could have signed up by mistake, therefore they refuse to refund any money. He did concede that the signup process may have been an automatic pop up window from a random website though. I suggested that they may have some kind of security vulnerability if I'm confident that I didn't sign up but on his system I have... but he didn't seem very concerned.

Three also will not refund the money this time for some reason, although have now assured me that this subscription has been cancelled, but they cannot prevent future subscriptions from the same company.

Have any of you encountered this? Did you find a way to get your money back? It's not the end of the world to lose £36 but it's the principle and I'd rather avoid it if I can.

Thanks

DarkShadow

Its instant gaming

Martin50

Not the same outfit but I got stung by something very similar hidden in what might be politely described as an adult pop-up, and if you search my previous posts to this forum you can read about how this appeared to happen. It's ludicrous to claim that it's impossible to subscribe unintentially to one of these services, and their claim to be opt-in as distinct to opt-out is distinctly dubious given your experience and mine that the first communication you get from them is a text which asks you to respond to cancel the service.

It should be possible to block any further subscriptions through your phone network.

I didn't get anything back from the scammers. My (then) phone network handled the whole thing incredibly unhelpfully and the direct effect is that I moved away from the network that I'd used for 15+ years as soon as I had the opportunity