Grrr shortcode txt companies

[GreenGrass]

Just got off the phone to orange after fuming my frustration about receiving unsolicited text messages from 84184 at £1.28 a shot..

I received four of them this month every Sunday at about 18:00, i did think when i got them if ive been charged so i scanned my bill that arrived this morning.

It'd been ok if i actually set and authorised the damn things but i didn’t.. They just started sending me them (joke texts) out of the blue.

Orange weren’t too helpful either to begin with they gave me the run about telling me i should contact them to uphold any charges and refund me. Told me the company was called psychic minds and id have to contact there operator Hy Byte.. they gave me there number (in London) which i phoned and got no answer...

What utter ******* orange charged me for em so i wanted them to refund them eventually they 'should' be refunding £10 next month (£4 more than expected), thanks to a few persuading words from me dad

I cant see how these people get away with it, its stealing. These companies should be outlawed and banned. Dunno how they got hold of my number are there any databases for mobile numbers that black lists them from marketing companies etc?

I put in a complaint to the ICSTIS doubt much will happen.

Anyways enough of my rant, anyone had any similar problems? Any ideas where else i should complain?

 

[GreenGrass]

Originally Posted by djcj
Count yourself lucky. I work in the high value call centre for vodafone and recieve about 10 phone calls every single day from customers like yourself about this exact same problem. The customers i deal with usually have charges between £100-£200 a month from these text companies. Although today i had a customer whose latest bill contained £2400 worth of charges for unsolicited text in the past month alone.

That’s blooding shocking , must have had a constant bombardment of text to accrue that amount. I doubt if it wasn’t for the intervention of my dad, that i would have got a refund at all.
I do believe that operators should do something as well to stop these type of activities. It felt like they were passing the book and turning a blind eye. Though I don’t believe there fully to blame they could be doing something.

Originally Posted by spirit
surely for this one, they'd have to send a confirmation txt, which would have to be replied too - to confirm identity and ownership etc ???

Thats exactly what i thought happened, or that they put the actual charge at the bottom of the text.

Is it possible to get a ban on premium rate/text numbers

 

[GreenGrass]

Originally Posted by Dolph
someone putting your number in on the companies website either deliberately or by mistake (a typo)

Surly cant be that simple to sign someone up and technically debit there account.. thats just bad practice