Blocking Premium Text Messages - Possible?

arty · 6 Jun 2020 at 10:56

Does anyone know whether it's possible to prevent a mobile phone from receiving premium rate text messages?

I ask because I recently received an unsolicited message for which I was charged £4.50, and when I complained and contacted the (rather shady) company who sent it to me, they've issued me with a refund which I'm still in the process of chasing. As I'm very unlikely to ever subscribe to one of these dodgy premium text message services, I was wondering if it would be possible to just block all of them so that this doesn't happen again.

I'm currently with Three, but my contract is up and I'm thinking of changing to GiffGaff. If anyone knows of any other companies who might offer this option (perhaps as part of a 'parental control'?), I'd be really interested to hear - thanks!

Orcvader · 6 Jun 2020 at 12:08

You should be able to contact your network and ask them to block all premium texts/calls.

According to Three's site you can also forward the text to 7726 to report the unsolicited text which they will then use to block for future cases: http://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI...Kb=Mobile,Ts=Mobile,T=CaseDoc,Case=Obj(42783)

7726 is the number all providers use to receive reports on spam text and calls, so should also apply to giffgaff as well.

arty · 6 Jun 2020 at 12:53

Thanks. I did report the text as spam immediately, but Three still refused to refund me the cost of it, saying that I must have subscribed to it (I hadn't).

I'll get in touch and ask them to block future premium text messages.

phenx · 6 Jun 2020 at 22:40

Similar thing happened to me, I got my network (ID) to block all premium text messages by turning off the premium feature on my account (which also prevents me from making premium calls), they weren't able to refund the messages but were able to give me the contact details of the company who sent the texts. I then sent the company a threatning email and they refunded all the messages in full.