£75 to make a complaint to Three!

BristolMan

Hi everyone,

OK - I had some complaints to make regarding Three. Not least, about the six different quotations I was given for the cost of my final bill.

Going through their call centres was proving fruitless. Their call centres struggle to understand basic problems, but something as complex as a final bill was well outside of their ability. So, I Googled the following: "Three Complaints number UK". The first hit told me that the phone number was 0844 826 8076. So I called it. It took me just over 2 hours to resolve the issue. Eventually, Three offered me £50 as an apology, but only on condition that I close my complaint.



This morning, I discoved that the 0844 number is a premium rate number, and that the phone call I placed cost me £75. I am annoyed that Three would have a premium rate number as a complaints number. They know that people only use their mobiles nowadays, and that they could easily have set an 01 number as their complaints number.



I've raised a complaint through Resolver to have the £75 reimbursed. I wanted to mention this on here to stop other people falling into this trap. As far as I can see, the following happens.



1) Three employ people with poor English, as they care more about money than good service.



2) The people with poor English make errors. Three don't care about this.



3) When you want to make a complaint, a premium rate number is advertised.



4) When you call the premium rate number, Three make some money on this.



I'm really annoyed. At least the £50 I was offered from Three (and the discount which Vodaphone have given me on this call), mean that I'm only out of pocket by about £15. Even still.



Avoid Three.

Ian011

BristolMan wrote: »

I Googled the following: "Three Complaints number UK". The first hit told me that the phone number was 0844 826 ****. So I called it. It took me just over 2 hours to resolve the issue. Eventually, Three offered me £50 as an apology, but only on condition that I close my complaint.

This morning, I discovered that the 0844 number is a premium rate number, and that the phone call I placed cost me £75. I am annoyed that Three would have a premium rate number as a complaints number. They know that people only use their mobiles nowadays, and that they could easily have set an 01 number as their complaints number.

All 084, 087, 09 and 118 numbers are premium rate. The premium is the additional Service Charge.

Consumer protection regulations in force since 13 June 2014 require an 01, 02, 03 or 080 number for after-sales enquiries and issues. Three changed their numbers years ago to comply with the regulations. The correct numbers are found on their official website.

BristolMan wrote: »

3) When you want to make a complaint, a premium rate number is advertised.

4) When you call the premium rate number, Three make some money on this.

The 0844 number you called is a premium rate "call connection service". It's a scam. Check the disclaimer on the website advertising the premium rate 0844 number.

You paid premium rates to a third-party to simply forward your calls onwards to Three. That third-party pocketed the Service Charge revenue.

Find the website promoting that 0844 number and report it to ASA as being misleading. The scam website still exists because previous victims did not report it.

Ask the connection service operator to refund the call charges. If this service had been offered on an 087 or 09 number you could have complained to the Phone-paid Services Authority. Unfortunately, ICSS services operating on 084 numbers escape their regulation.

Never call numbers found in Google and other search results without first checking the number is genuine and is being promoted on the official website. Never call numbers starting 070, 084, 087, 090, 091 or 098 as these are all premium rate.



See also:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5360819
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5639282
http://www.fairtelecoms.org.uk/ICSS

BristolMan

Just done some digging, and I can see that you're right. I'm going to delete this thread in an hour or so, as I don't want to have a go at Three, for my own stupidity in getting scammed. However, I'll set up a new thread warning people about the website which gave me the number.

Ian011

This thread already serves as that warning. There are hundreds of sites each promoting fake premium rate numbers for hundreds of well-known organisations.

Most people who fall victim to this scam remain unware that they were scammed by a third-party and simply blame the organisation they called. This may be why so few reports are made to the various regulators.



See also:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5639282
https://www.asa.org.uk/news/compliance-update-call-forwarding-services.html
http://psauthority.org.uk/blogs/2017/april/avoid-unexpected-charges-when-calling-customer-services-helplines

redux

Apparently the registrants of some of the websites which list that number are non-trading individuals who have opted to have their address omitted from whois services.

I wonder if it would be worth contacting the domain registrars to ask if this is actually true, and possibly also ask the number provider TalkTalk about its part in this operation.

pmduk

I came across this issue (0844 complaints) on more than one occasion when working for a network.
The companies concerned claim to be offering you an additional service, usually recording the call, hence justifying the cost. The network's own number for complaints is always to be found on the company's own website.
At least one complainant tried claiming the cost of the call from the network, but got nowhere despite going to the ADR.

BristolMan

Update:

I spoke to Vodafone. The first lady was helpful. She said that an ‘SME’ would call me within 30 minutes. 2 hours later, an SME called. He was useless, and rude. That surprised me, because I assumed that he would have better service skills. I called back and spoke to a second SME. He was also useless, and started telling me that he could tell that I was typing to 'socially engineer' the conversation, as he had a degree in "psychology and psychoanasis". That's not a typo BTW – he actually told me about his degree is psycho-ana-sis. I was quite tempted to ask who this “psycho Anna” was, and to request that he stopped calling me ‘sis’. However, I decided to be mature.
I spoke to his manager who, quite quickly, refunded the entire £80 call charge as he could see the lunacy of the situation. So - I'm no longer out of pocket. [FONT=&quot]��[/FONT]

So - the website itself (complaints-number) appears as the first hit on Google when you search for "Three Complaints number". What is worse, is that the premium rate number is listed in the box before any of the search results. This makes is seem far more official. The site itself lists hundreds of premium rate phone numbers for different companies. None of these phone numbers are legitimate, yet they all forward to legitimate numbers so it’s impossible to tell until you get your bill.

What more concerning is that a clear scammer is acting as an phone-intermediately between me and, potentially, my bank. This company who routes my calls could easily be listening in for phone numbers / addresses / bank details / security questions etc. I found this quite chilling to realise.

I've found the hosting provider, and I'm going to contact them. I'm also going to see if I can raise this as fraud through Google. Lesson learned here.

Thankfully Daniel from Vodafone managed to sort this all out for me.

MurkySurfy

Really the lesson here should be never just look at the first "featured snippet" of a Google search as it can be influenced by companies or the AI is not intelligent enough to check for just freephone numbers by itself or if it's correct or not etc.
A featured snippet is this:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en-GB

Searching for "Three Complaints number" does give the first web link to Three's official page for how to complain to them.

BristolMan

MurkySurfy wrote: »

Really the lesson here should be never just look at the first "featured snippet" of a Google search as it can be influenced by companies or the AI is not intelligent enough to check for just freephone numbers by itself or if it's correct or not etc.


Searching for "Three Complaints number" does give the first web link to Three's official page for how to complain to them.

Yes - I'll be more careful next time.

On my computer, a Google search for Three Complaints Number does bring the offending site to the first hit, and the Three website to the second.

ryan121

When I had a complaint with three they gave me a free phone number to get to their complaints team directly. This is only for open complaints which is probably why it's not public.

PHK

BristolMan wrote: »

Update:

I spoke to Vodafone. The first lady was helpful. She said that an ‘SME’ would call me within 30 minutes. 2 hours later, an SME called. He was useless, and rude. That surprised me, because I assumed that he would have better service skills. I called back and spoke to a second SME. He was also useless, and started telling me that he could tell that I was typing to 'socially engineer' the conversation, as he had a degree in "psychology and psychoanasis". That's not a typo BTW – he actually told me about his degree is psycho-ana-sis. I was quite tempted to ask who this “psycho Anna” was, and to request that he stopped calling me ‘sis’. However, I decided to be mature.
I spoke to his manager who, quite quickly, refunded the entire £80 call charge as he could see the lunacy of the situation. So - I'm no longer out of pocket. [FONT=&quot]��[/FONT]

So - the website itself (complaints-number) appears as the first hit on Google when you search for "Three Complaints number". What is worse, is that the premium rate number is listed in the box before any of the search results. This makes is seem far more official. The site itself lists hundreds of premium rate phone numbers for different companies. None of these phone numbers are legitimate, yet they all forward to legitimate numbers so it’s impossible to tell until you get your bill.

What more concerning is that a clear scammer is acting as an phone-intermediately between me and, potentially, my bank. This company who routes my calls could easily be listening in for phone numbers / addresses / bank details / security questions etc. I found this quite chilling to realise.

I've found the hosting provider, and I'm going to contact them. I'm also going to see if I can raise this as fraud through Google. Lesson learned here.

Thankfully Daniel from Vodafone managed to sort this all out for me.

Why are Vodafone paying for your mistake? Genuine question, I fail to see why other customer's should pay (as Vodafone will want to make that £80 and other generous payments back) and why you didn't chase the company that took your money instead