WARNING of possible scam using pay by mobile phone service.
I have just had money deducted from my 3-2-1 PAYG mobile phone balance by a company claiming that I signed up to a "Fitmate" service at a cost of £3.00 per week.
I am certain that I never signed up for any such service, and most certainly not using my PAYG mobile phone for payment.
I suspect this may be a very clever scam in that the amount is fairly small, so most people will not bother complaining to their mobile phone service provider (as I did).
I was horrified to discover that there is no way that the mobile phone service provider can switch off the option to pay for goods and services using one's mobile phone, nor do they have the capability of recovering any payments or terminating any ongoing payments. Instead I was told that I had to text STOP to the number that the (alleged) scammer provided for this purpose - something that cost me an extra 10p on top of the £3.00 that they had already deducted.
The purpose of this post is to alert others as I feel sure I may not be the only person who will get scammed in this way. I never click indescriminately on links on websites, in emails or SMS texts, so there is no way that I would have - even inadvertantly - enabled this subscription to occur.
Full text of the messages used to scam me are:
Message 1 (timed 13:13 yesterday)
FreeMsg: U have joined to get fit @ (url removed for safety) for £3.00 a week. First 24hrs are free. To cancel text STOP to 83463. Help 03300535848
Message 2 (timed 13:04 today)
FreeMsg: U are a member of Fitmate @ (url removed for safety) for £3.00 a week. Send stop to 83463 to cancel. Help 03300535848
It seems that the second message was sufficient for Three to decide to pay £3.00 from my PAYG balance!
Now I guess I have to wait for the (alleged) scammers to try again, and again, and apparently there's nothing I can do to prevent it!