Don’t get hooked!
Are YOU paying for rogue phone text messages that could soon add up to hundreds of pounds?
I certainly did not knowingly sign up to be fleeced by a company I have never heard of for a prize I know nothing about DAViD JEnnings, small business owner
PEOPLE who fail to regularly check their phone bills could not only be paying to receive nuisance texts – but may well have paid hundreds of pounds over several years without realising.
Companies can charge customers for receiving text messages – anything from competitions, the lottery through to dieting – by simply adding the cost directly to mobile phone bills.
These are known as premium rate text messages.
In theory, they should only be sent when customers agree – for example, by signing up to an online service.
But in practice companies are flouting this requirement.
As The Mail on Sunday revealed last month, thousands of people are unwittingly paying to receive texts. The small but regular sums that are added to phone bills often go unnoticed with customers deleting the offending texts, believing them to be harmless spam.
Yet, our investigations show that the sums involved can be significant – as high as £800.
James Walker of complaints service Resolver says: ‘For too long businesses have been exploiting gaps in regulation to trap unwitting customers into paying extra phone charges.
‘The result is phone users paying for premium rate text services they neither wanted nor were informed about – so check your old bills.’
David Jennings, a 62-year-old businessman from Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, has been a victim of paying for texts he received out of the blue. Following a close inspection of his phone bill following an overseas trip, he saw £4.50-a-week charges for a competition he knew nothing about.
He was charged even after replying to the number with the word ‘Stop’, which is supposed to put an end to such messages.
After reviewing old bills, he initially calculated he had paid more than £270. His mobile provider Vodafone only offered to repay any charges taken after he raised the issue with it in October last year.
It also agreed to contact the competition provider on his behalf to stop any more incoming texts. But he then requested a full mobile account history going back two years which revealed he had actually paid £450 to the sender of the texts.
He pursued his case through regulator the Phone-paid Services Authority and has now received a full refund.
David says: ‘Under no circumstances did I knowingly sign up to be fleeced on a weekly basis for the rest of my life by a company I had never heard of for a prize I knew nothing about.
‘I just hope my experience awakens more people to this text rip-off.’
Linda Warren is another victim of receiving expensive texts.
She says: ‘The amount of money taken from my phone bill on behalf of third parties was some £800. All the companies were linked but trading under different names.
‘One offered me £180 if I went to the post office within the month with a bar code they had the cheek to send by text.’
Linda put a bar on her phone that stopped the delivery of any further chargeable messages.
She adds: ‘I feel the Government should be doing more to address this issue.’
Ernest Doku, an expert at comparison website uSwitch, says: ‘It could be months before you twig that you have been paying to receive texts.
‘By the time you realise, you could have inadvertently accrued some seriously hefty charges.’
NON-CONSENSUAL TEXTS
NEARLY 16,000 complaints about premium rate texts were fielded by the regulator in the year to September 2017. Many came from people who said they never gave consent to be charged for receiving subscription texts. Sometimes, after a discussion with the regulator or their mobile network, complainants remembered donating to a charity or signing up to a service.
But others strongly denied having any involvement with the companies.
Often mobile providers suggest they must have clicked on a website link or entered a competition without reading the terms and conditions.
Mobile providers profit from these messages but do not disclose how much they make from them.
The Phone-paid Services Authority has received hundreds of complaints from people in recent years who have been charged for receiving pornographic text messages they did not want – from companies they had not heard of.
The charges were as high as £4.50 a week. The businesses responsible, says the regulator, were found to be lacking any ‘robust’ evidence of customers having provided consent. To comply with the regulator’s code, they must be able to supply such evidence.
Alan Morgan is among those confused about how he came to be paying for text messages he did not request.
He says: ‘I received messages about wrestling which I have no interest in.
‘I cannot believe they are allowed to get away with it.’
Alan has now requested that his mobile provider block any further premium rate texts. IT IS not just nuisance texts that cost customers – but ones that do not even exist. Retired IT professional Ann Jones found herself paying for ghost texts that did not show on her Nokia handset as sent or received.
Last year, she switched from a contract deal to pay-as-you-go because she does not use her mobile phone regularly. In fact, she uses it so little she only added £20 credit in the belief this would last
PHANTOM TEXTS
her all year. But within weeks, half of the credit had disappeared – despite Ann only making a couple of short calls and sending a few texts.
She says: ‘I got a detailed breakdown of my charges and found that every day I was being charged at least 12p for mysterious messages which did not appear on my phone as sent or received.’ Ann, 68, lives with her husband Rod in Oldham, Greater Manchester. She adds: ‘Since retirement I use my phone sporadically and never for the internet.’
Ann complained to her mobile provider Vodafone but received no response so she switched networks. The Mail on Sunday asked Vodafone to investigate.
It refunded the charges and said it was ‘sorry’ for not having sorted out the problem earlier.