Scams linked to apps

Julie81

On saturday we needed to charge our electric car a Peterborough Services on the A1.  We needed to download the IONITY app to do this.  To create an account I had to put in my bank card details. This is a stressful thing to have to do when you are short of time and standing in the cold. Unbeknown to me there was a banner at the bottom of the app which just said CONTINUE. I pressed it and it now appears that by doing this I was subscribing to fitgym.pro which I found out when I next checked my emails.  Checking my bank account I could see that there was £0.08 taken out - the business type being described as "discount store".  I thought I had replied to the email saying that I did not want to subscribe to this but now I can find no evidence.  Today I received a further email saying that my subscription had been downgraded to basic.  I checked my bank account and £32.07 has been withdrawn. I replied to the support email saying that I did not intend to subscribe and please could they refund my subscription as soon as possible.  I have now had a reply to say that this is not possible as I had given permission to use my bank details.  This is a complete scam.  The presentation of the emails is very basic and amateurish and the "company" is based in Cyprus (hence the strange amount of money as it is converted from Euros). What rights if any do I have to claim this money back and what can I do to secure the bank details that they have?

MattMattMattUK

Julie81 said:

On saturday we needed to charge our electric car a Peterborough Services on the A1.  We needed to download the IONITY app to do this. 

You can charge without the app or registration, using contactless, although you will pay a higher rate per kWh.

Julie81 said:

To create an account I had to put in my bank card details. This is a stressful thing to have to do when you are short of time and standing in the cold. Unbeknown to me there was a banner at the bottom of the app which just said CONTINUE. I pressed it and it now appears that by doing this I was subscribing to fitgym.pro which I found out when I next checked my emails.

I have tried on the Android app replicate this, or anything similar and the app does not appear to be running adds. How did you download the app, direct from the app store on your device, or via a QR code? Are you sure the two are connected?

Julie81 said:

Checking my bank account I could see that there was £0.08 taken out - the business type being described as "discount store".  I thought I had replied to the email saying that I did not want to subscribe to this but now I can find no evidence.  Today I received a further email saying that my subscription had been downgraded to basic.  I checked my bank account and £32.07 has been withdrawn. I replied to the support email saying that I did not intend to subscribe and please could they refund my subscription as soon as possible.  I have now had a reply to say that this is not possible as I had given permission to use my bank details.  This is a complete scam.  The presentation of the emails is very basic and amateurish and the "company" is based in Cyprus (hence the strange amount of money as it is converted from Euros). What rights if any do I have to claim this money back and what can I do to secure the bank details that they have?

You need to establish what happened first, but from a small bit of testing it does not appear connected to the Ionity app. Is the app still installed on your device?

flaneurs_lobster

The app (at least the Android version) has 500k downloads and none of the recent reviews mention being signed up to subscriptions to gyms in Cyprus. As @MattMattMattUK says, did you download via a QR code? Did you actually download the Ionity app and did it work?