Don't know which forum to post this. Have just received my mobile phone bill and found 2 entries underPremium messaging service received with a charge of £3.00. I queried this with my service provider 3 and they have agreed to remove the charge on this occasion and advised me to send a text message saying stop. I have on a couple of occasions seen the little message icon and on opening found an empty message and these presumably are the messages in question.. How is this possibly allowed. What is the difference between this and someone putting their hand in my pocket and taking money out of it. 3 also gave me the phonenumber of this company, needless to say an 0871 number for which I was able to find a number on this site relating to a company called mblox inc. The young man I spoke to insisted that they are merely a company that sends the messages on behalf of other companies and that in my case that company was called Millwind. I pointed out to him that what he was doing was aiding and abetting criminals in pursuance of their crimes.
What can be done about this.. I can't see them taking any notice of a message to stop.

Hi Reggie, substantively you can do nothing other than what you have already done. Welcome to the nether land age of Ofcom's quasi-criminal telecommunications. Ofcom do nothing to stop all these scams and tricks; indeed they condone them and liaise with their telecomms buddies to facilitate each new one as it is devised and implemented.

The world of telecommunications in the UK under a totally ineffective regulator as we have is now one where quasi-criminal activities to cheat unsuspecting dupes escalate daily. It is out of control, and the reason is that there is such big money to be made so easily.

Until there is some EU or parliamentary sanction upon Ofcom for a total failure to undertake and fulfill their principal duties and responsibilities within telecommunications things will continue to get worse. And this will never happen whilst we have the present government, because they have their snout in the trough to extract significant stealth taxes and to assist some of their cronies to milk the system so they can make political donations; so they certainly do not want any changes which might rock the boat!

I have sent a letter to my MP and have complained to "Payphoneplus"who say they will investigate...we shall see and will keep you posted of any developments.

Unfortunately, judging from the experience of many of the rest of us so far who have bombarded our MPs and MEPs about such scams, that is unlikely to achieve any action of any sort either!

I was able to send an email to the offending party demanding that they stop these texts, also texted them to stop as advised by Payphone plus and have received an email from them saying they will send me a refund of the charges if I send them my address..I am a bit loth to do this. What do you think ?

Quote:

The world of telecommunications in the UK under a totally ineffective regulator as we have is now one where quasi-criminal activities to cheat unsuspecting dupes escalate daily. It is out of control, and the reason is that there is such big money to be made so easily.

Yes, interesting, isn't it. I am on a VoIP system in the USA and keep getting 'scam' calls  - and no prizes for guessing what the caller ID shows in 90% of them? Yep - a +44 number. Usually a 0-207 or a 0-208 number. I've tried calling a couple back using Skype and - surprise, surprise - the 'number you have called does not exist'. Exactly what I assumed.

Generally, they go straight to voice mail, and immediately cut off. The few I have answered have advised me that '..... I need to press 1 to call my bank (yeah, right!!) and confirm my card details before my credit card is deactivated'. Of course, there is never a mention of which card or which bank......... ;)

So why is the regulation so slack in the UK that allows false UK numbering caller ID to be transmitted? It doesn't happen from anywhere else!! It says a great deal about Ofcom........

(The other scam calls are normally shown as 'anonymous' so no idea where they are "originating" from).

reggie wrote on Feb 7^th, 2008 at 10:36pm:

I was able to send an email to the offending party demanding that they stop these texts, also texted them to stop as advised by Payphone plus and have received an email from them saying they will send me a refund of the charges if I send them my address..I am a bit loth to do this. What do you think ?

Email them to credit your mobile account, surely they can credit it if they can debit it?

Strangeas it may seem they claim not to be able to credit my phone account!All they can do is send me a postal order! not even a cheque. I asked for their name and address It is Millwind at113 George Lane, London E18 1AB (South Woodford area) and guess what   no phone number is listed for this company at that address. One wonders what sort of operation it is!

Do you have a solicitor?

I am no legal expert, but I assume as your contract is with your phone company, it has a duty to pay you back. Regardless of whether it passed the money to the scammers, it took the money.

Reverse-billed SMS is nothing short of a rip-off.

Customer services No.  0871 240 2500.

To exit this service text 'STOP' to 79990,

Hope this helps

Thanks for your advice. I had already sent the stop message tho' 3 advised me at the time to text it to the short code from which I had received the original non messages. That set me back 90 pence tho' worth it to stop the rot. Strangely I haven't managed to find anything out about this company on google, there are 24 pages relating to Millwind but none of them seem to be relevant to this company operating out of UK..I would have expected to find something about this scam somewhere!

Have you searched Grumbletext?

E-Petition to the PM

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ringtones/

Submitted by Dawn Shelton – Deadline to sign up by: 11 February 2009

<<

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Stop the ringtones scams going on and costing thousands of £'s of peoples hard earned money for nothing.


It has unfortunately come to my notice that there are a great number of dodgy ringtone companies making a fortune out of unsuspecting mobile phone users, by offering free ringtones to them. The obvious catch to this is that to get the free ringtone you automatically sign up for extortionate charges for paid for ringtones, which are automatically taken through the mobile phone suppliers billing. This is not noticed until your mobile phone bill comes in and by then it is a huge amount of hassle to get the monies refunded, and maybe a county court summons eyc. There are a lot of websites on the net complaining bitterly about this, and I believe it is time for the government to restrict these companies and put down specific laws to prohibit this type of scam, by forcing these companies to get a proper signed contract with people who do actually want new ringtones on their phones. This may take longer for the people to receive the ringtones themselves, but it will also save the unsuspecting public from being charged for ringtones they do not know they have requested.

>>

Dave wrote on Feb 10^th, 2008 at 7:29pm:

Do you have a solicitor?

Dave have you checked lately what solicitors charge per hour.

If you had then I think you would realise that this is a perfectly ridiculous suggestion to make in the context of recovering this small sum of money! ::)

Small claims court would be the best way perhaps, you do not have to employ a solicitor this way, I believe.

sherbert wrote on Feb 20^th, 2008 at 9:06am:

Small claims court would be the best way perhaps, you do not have to employ a solicitor this way, I believe.

You are correct but the paper trail to get to court is still hideous unless the company agrees to settle before the court hearing or fails to show up at the court hearing.