£1.50 SMS scam - T-Mobile's part

At no stage did she enter into a purchase.

I have asked for evidence that she agreed to the charge but both T-Mobile and the "other company" have refused to provide the evidence.

You miss the point. As it says above the *original*l purshase of the mobile, PAYG or contract, is what it is referring to.

"Peter Saxton" wrote

Did she read the fine print of the T&C for receiving the "free" game?

Don't be suprised if this is also ignored. I believe that many companies ignore complaints and only respond to actual court summonses (this is from personal experience).

Ah, so you are actually receiving these emails.

Presumably they are bound by the rules laid down by the "premium rate" regulator (whatever it was he changed his name to), and if they do that then no crime has been committed (and the fact that you say you didn't subscribe would be an administrative error, not a crime)

tim

Exactly. I think they rely on people not excercising their legal rights over small amounts of money. This way they can scam or overcharge many people and get away with it. If more people protested and/or take court action then these scams would not be worthwhile.

There seems to me to be a great deal of inconsistency in the way the police handle certain crimes. You hear of cases where the full weight of the law has fallen on someone, where the law has not been applied as it was intented. On the other hand there are many habitual criminals that get awat scot free.

If the contract does allow anything like this I would think the OP would have a strong case under unfair contract terms legislation.

You would probably get a more authoritative answer from a legal ng such as uk.legal.moderated.

No. I received a text which was similar to the texts my wife as been receiving.

They have not complied with the rules and they refuse to provide evidence they have complied with the rules.

"administrative error"? The same administrative error committed by bank robbers by forgetting to get the agreement of the bank to take money by force?

The original "terms & conditions" have no such term. T-Mobile certainly haven't been able or willing to produce one.

She says she did and nobody has been able to provide any T&Cs that refer to any charges and which have been agreed by her.

yes, like those that claim for mortgage payments 5 years after its been paid off...

Yes, they seem to rely on legal action only being threatened and not taken. I've had cases where I have received the defence from the court on the same day I have received a letter offering me the full amount I claimed.

Reverse charge texts have been around for ages. They have caused a lot of problems and the regulator has tightened up on the rules, but nobody has suggested that the clause allowing the telco to bill you for the third party charge is illegal in principle

tim

Of course there is nothing wrong with being billed for third party charges per se. The problem arises when there is no evidence available that there is any agreement to pay or disclosure of charges.

I had a similar experience with Virgin Mobile itself.

You will be familiar with 'voicemail' which will respond to a caller if you don't answer the phone quickly or it's switched off.

If however, you're somewhere like the USA, you will know that making a call costs £1.50 per minute and receiving one costs 80p a minute. That's fine and understood.

But if the phone is not answered or is turned off, the call gets diverted to voicemail, and that costs £1.50 per call! If you pick up the phone, it costs

80p to talk for a minute; if you don't pick it up, it will cost £1.50 to not talk at all!

It took ages to figure out what all those mysterious 0, 1, 2, or 3-second calls were on my bill, costing £1.50 each in US or 60p in Europe.

Dealing with Virgin Mobile was impossible, I was always waiting to hear back from their finance department but they never responded. On one trip these calls amounted to £40-£50.

Once I found out the cause however, I just disabled voicemail completely. I couldn't afford it. You can imagine having a flat battery abroad (or be on a flight) and getting loads of wrong numbers or just malicious calls, or even perfectly normal ones. At £1.50 a call it would cost a fortune.

I didn't say that there was. But the point is, the clause making this proof not the responsibility of the telco is probably sound.

tim

If you are saying there may be a clause in the t&c that I can get charged for a service without any evidence of the service then that would be classed as an unfair term and not enforceable.

The telco will have some evidence. They will have a statement from the service provider that you did in fact contract to the service.

If you are saying that that's not enough then it would never be possible to bill anybody for any telephone service as that's about as good as the evidence gets with such supplies.

I agree it's not ideal, but what other solution is there?

tim

O2 also do this. I'm not sure what they charge, but they charge you to have voicemail take a call when roaming. So I just turned it off. Those people that matter will know to send a text if it's something that needs dealing with. I don't care for the rest.