Has anyone noticed the cleverly worded adverts that appear to offer things like mobile games, ringtones and wallpapers for ‘free’, only to sting you with some indecipherable small print after you’ve signed up?
Well I have been caught out by something similar. I’m not 100% sure how it’s come about, but I’ve got a pretty good idea, and I’m quite cross. So I thought I’d warn you, as you may be getting ripped off in a similar fashion.
The last few months, I received two messages a week; the first was a little enticer – it said something along the lines of “answer the question in the following message correctly to be entered in to a prize draw to win a Wii / Apple iPhone / LCD TV” etc etc. basically dangling a carrot in front of your nose to generate interest and get people to reply. Then the second message would come through with the question and three possible answers. Now, I didn’t fall for this (as such) because the questions were so darn easy that the chances of winning were like a million to one! (And with Google etc you stood a pretty low chance of winning anyway, even if the question had been tricky!)
Anyway, I was getting these messages quite a lot, but I would simply delete them as soon as they arrived. I remember thinking “Ooo, a text message! Who’s this from? Oh… 81121″ and this feeling of disappointment would swoop over as I found it wasn’t a message from a friend haha. But one day I actually read one of the messages and the opening line was, and I quote: “FREE MESSAGE” and for some reason, that I really can’t put my finger on I immediately thought “Hmmmmmmm”. I got straight on the phone to my network operator and explained the story. She got my details up on screen and her reply was, again, I quote “Oh dear, you’re getting ripped off there Miss!”
It turns out these “free” messages were actually charging me! Despite me not doing anything with them other than deleting them!! In one month, I’d received EIGHT text messages and had been charge £6.00!! I was furious! The assistant was fantastic and advised me on what to do, which was to simply text the word “STOP” to the number. And like magic, they stopped. But even so, over the months I’d been receiving these messages I’d lost out on £15.00!!
The assistant and I got chatting and it turns out that my number may have been stored, after texting in to a TV show to vote for my favourite person to win. Now, I can’t say exactly which is one because I don’t want to point my finger and accuse wrongly but things such as reality TV shows are a classic example. Granted, this sort of thing has been going on for a long time, since certain shows were fined for still charging people for entering competitions etc after the closing times, but you don’t necessarily realise that you are a victim of it. Despite this being the case, industry regulator PhonepayPlus (the watchdog formerly known as ICSTIS) has only recently announced that it’ll be keeping a sharper eye on services.
I did a little scouting round the internet and according to The Register problems with this kind of complaint seem to have arisen from companies clearly breaking rules, for not ‘outlining clear and accurate pricing and honest advertising’, for which penalties have already been imposed in 2008. A formal review is underway that will look at how to deal with unsolicited texts and the wanton use of the word ‘free’.
According to The Register, teenagers are by far the largest target audience for these sorts of promotions, so you may want to have a little chat with kiddiewinks who have a mobile phone of their own and just advise them that there is a chance they are actually being charged for services they believe to be ‘free’.
So my advice to you is, anything that you think is suspicious and not as legit as it wants to claim, investigate with your network operator. You could be losing out on money too that you really didn’t want to give away to some sneaky company who want to cash in your vote. If you are texting for ‘free’ ringtones etc, just check the print, because you will more than likely find that you are being charged for every message you receive. It borders on exploitation if you are apathetic towards or unaware of the sorts of hidden costs you might encounter, and I’d hate to put a figure on how much they’ve managed to scam along the way…. I bet it’s along the lines of millions though!
Let me know your thoughts or share stories with us.
