Spam Texts costing £1.50 (merged threads)

Jo_anne_2

My son had a text sent to his PAYG O2 mobile this evening from 88777 saying:

The system did not understand your message and generated a support enquiry (helpline: 0871 872 0008)

and charged him £2. He hasn't sent a text or accidently subscribed to anything. What's going on? Is it a scam? What can we do?

Please can anyone help? Thanks.

Edinburghlass_2

Jo-anne please read the previous posts in this thread that I have merged your post with which should help you.

chuckles1066

Jo_anne wrote:

My son had a text sent to his PAYG O2 mobile this evening from 88777 saying:

The system did not understand your message and generated a support enquiry (helpline: 0871 872 0008)

and charged him £2. He hasn't sent a text or accidently subscribed to anything. What's going on? Is it a scam? What can we do?

Please can anyone help? Thanks.

Yep a scam:

Opera Telecom
3 Brindley Place
Birmingham
West Midlands
B1 2JB
0808 1313131

is where you should start

Jo_anne_2

Thank you

Cats_pajamas

This is a complete joke and apologies but I need to off load about it. I was getting these messages when no where did I agree to pay money to anyone. I didn't know what they were so I just kept deleting them and then realised they have been costing me about 11 quid a month for at least 4 months (during which time I have been saving so hard). I have taken my sim out, contacted voidafone (who tells me the messages are from MBLOX), contacted MBLOX who gave me the following information:

"Dear *********,

Thank you for your email.

From the information you have submitted, I understand you are being billed for
receiving unwanted messages on the mobile phone number ***********.

Our logfiles found the following client responsible for the messages sent to
this mobile number:***********

Client: Boltblue
Contact details: Tel: 08700209312 Email: help@boltblue.com
Shortcode: 85233


I have contacted the client responsible and have asked them to stop all
subscription services to your mobile number. Services that are not subscription
based will stop when messages are no longer sent from the mobile phone, to the
short code.

Please allow 48 hours for the service to be terminated.

With regards to a refund, the decisions for refunds are not handled by Mblox as
we do not send the messages or charge you for subscription or services, Mblox
provides only the infrastructure for companies to send text messages to end
users. Therefore any refund enquiries must be made with the companies which are
responsible for sending you the messages and charging. in this instance the
company is Boltblue, I have supplied their contact information above."

I then contacted them through their wesite site contact us form with this text:

"I am receiving and being charged for unwanted & unsolicited text
messages from your organisation. Please stop sending these and provide
me with details of how I came to receive these text messages as I
cannot afford them, didn't want or use them and require a full
refund. Please contact me through email only. Thank you. ''
...But haven't heard back from them so I am now sending them a copy of the email trhrough normal email so that I have a trail if I need to take this to some Ombutsman. These people are sooooo mean - I am fuming and cant believe I have been so stupid - I am usually so careful I cant believe they caught me like this and frankly dont know how it happened so it must have been sneaky.
Is anyone trying to get money back the small claims court way. It seems I may have to give up my number which I have had for years, as I am not happy to put my sim card back in in case I get a backlog of these messages. It doesn't help that I'm away from the UK for half a year.
Wishing everyone well.
Cat

chuckles1066

Ask Boltblue for the audit trail proving that you requested the service.

They will refuse and hide behind the Data Protection Act so you will have to make an access request that will probably cost you £10.

But money well spent if the audit trail comes back blank (as I suspect it will) because you can add it to any claim you pursue.

Carl.

I realise that this might not help all people however, despite not receiving any of these texts I decided to call Vodafone and take pre-emptive action.

Vodafone are able to block all incoming texts, which means that they cannot send me the text messages which are chargeable.

If you don't use your phone for texting then contact your network and ask for an incoming text bar on the phone then they can't get you.

I have an old Virgin SIM with absolutely no credit on it for people who insist on using those text things instead of calling so they can't take anything from that.

Cats_pajamas

An update - Boltblue apparently have an 'audit trail'. I got this email from them - it kind of forces me to shut up as I can’t investigate things more thoroughly from my current position. I refuse to believe that it was clear from the information (if any) that I was given, that I was agreeing to pay £3/week but these are clever people and I have learned a valuable/costly lesson. I’m going to let this drop (assuming I don’t get charged anymore) and get back to enjoying my life.

'Hi

Having completed our investigations, I write to confirm that you joined
the Boltblue Club on 04/09/06. The subscription was made while trying to
send an SMS message to the following number ***********.

The terms and conditions of the subscription clearly state that it is a
weekly mobile subscription and charged at £3.00 per week. Customers can
unsubscribe anytime by sending STOP to 85233 Full terms and conditions
can be found at the following link

http://www.boltblue.com/free/terms.php

We would also like to highlight that before club subscription can be
completed, customer must send a text to our short code 85233 confirming
their order. We received a text from you on 04/09/06. You can either
check your bill or speak to your network provider who will be able to
confirm that a text was sent.

Your subscription has now been cancelled but you still have balance to
download content from our website https://www.boltblue.com. You can download
content only by logging in at our website with the user name and
password assigned at the time of Club registration. If you do not
remember your login details, send a text PASSWORD to 83233 to retrieve
login details again. You must not download content by sending text as
this may result in joining the club again.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at help@boltblue.com if you need
any assistance with downloading content.

Regards
Julie
Customer Services

jem16

I wouldn't accept their audit trail.

I had a similar problem, which after making a huge fuss, was investigated by O2's senior resolution department. They were given an audit trail which "supposedly" confirmed when I had sent a text requesting the spammer's services. My text logs confirmed I had sent no such text and this was confirmed to me by Peter Erskine, CEO of O2.

Cats_pajamas

Whoh, well done Jem16. I can completely accept that this may not be a fair representation of the facts but I am in South East Asia and wont be back for 4 months after which I will be all tied up getting back to real life. These jokers definitely misled me and it cost me £30 but it will cost me alot more in time and energy and possibly money to go after them. That is all they need from me before they move on to another fool. This sort of activity needs to be made illegal. It is worse than what the banks do with their unlawful charges.