"Low fines?
Fines from Phone Pay Plus are quite high for minor infractions. Go ahead and take a look at recent fines!"

What matters is not the absolute values of the fines, but the sizes of those fines in relation to the money made from the corresponding scams. Perhaps some of the latest fines reflect a new "get tough" approach from PP+, but we have had several false dawns in the past and, historically, the same firms have come back time after time with the same scams. This suggests that these firms normally make more than enough from their scamming activities to pay the fines and still make a healthy profit.

T-Mobile allow its accounts to bar short codes, Vodafone have promised the same option summer 2008 (we are watching), why not the rest? The answer is that they can take up to 50% of the cost of the fraudulent text. That's big money....

Fines from Phone Pay Plus are quite high for minor infractions. Go ahead and take a look at recent fines!


Jeffy is right: DO NOT PAY!

Orange are lying when they say that this is nothing to do with them. Your contract is with Orange. Orange choose to collect the money from you and hand it to the crooks. Threaten legal action (small claims for instance) and they will capitulate.

T-mobile allow you to block reverse charge spam before it starts. Vodafone will introduce this by summer this year. Three can do this but it is extremely difficult to find out about this from them. Orange and O2 will not budge on this.

PhonePayPlus are about as much use as a chocolate fire-guard - though should always report these scams to them. Tanla have a long and distinguished history of scamming phone users. The government and the police have decided to turn a blind eye to premium rate crime in all its many manifestations.

Our only hope (IMHO) is to put pressure on the networks. They are the only ones who have the clout to force change on the premium rate industry and the only people in the system who (because they are "customer facing") are susceptible to pressure from consumers.

We should all refuse to take out a contract with any network that refuses to let us block reverse charge spam.

It's a shame Phonepayplus or whatever they are called now have no teeth just like Ofcom.

Every UK network should have the ability to block premium rate SMS via a call to customer services or an option via their website.

It's a shame it won't happen because the networks take a cut of the spam messages...

Sue the feckers, relatively cheap and easy to do over at http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk

They might try excuses like "you must have entered your number on a website" - simply reply, "prove it - provide the logs - and I believe your use of unsecured and / or third party data of this type fails under the terms of the Data Protection Act"

IIRC they can't ask for the claim to be heard locally to them as they're a business, incurring further expense for them. If it was the other way around, you could ask it be to be transferred to your local court as a consumer.

It's called C4, and it is to be placed between the company's servers and its CEO before detonation.

If you check all the fines from prepayplus on Tamla you will see that most of them are pitifully low.
One would expect that many premium rate providers can either a) Scam the public by 'generating an acceptable number of complaints(generate high profits from not too many of the public')
b) Just scam the public anyway knowing the level of fine will be less than scam profits

Sounds like Orange are in league with these scammers. Think t-mobile and Vodaphone allow you to opt out.

The fines that are levied against companies like Tanla are subject to the Communications Act 2003. They can not exceed 10% of the revenue in question.
The fines are taken from revenue(30 day withhold) that Tanla withholds from their content provider.

The people who are being ripped off are in fact paying the fines.
Welcome to the self regulating thiefdom of the Premium Rate Industry.

Yah, got this same scam in the U.S. Received an annoying beep at 4am on a Monday morning, turned the blighter off. Their claim was that I had subscribed to a text service for poetry and other nonsense, even though I had never used texting before at all!

I will never do business again with the phone provider (Verizon), who billed me for a service I did not authorize and tried to say that they KNEW I ordered the service - but when asked what was the source of their knowledge admitted that all they really knew was that I had received the unwanted text and not responded to it. Bottom line: If you send the bill, you are responsible for its' existence. Loss of my 4 years as a customer will cost Verizon far more than they could ever have hoped to gain from insisting that I owed $20 for a service they themselves did not provide.

You'll think twice about texting singles in your local area next time wont you, Tony?

Can't imagine what sort of content would be even remotely worth signing up for at £1.50 a pop ? Care to enlighten us ? (*cough* - porn - *cough*)

:P

Many years ago we had a similar issue with collect calls from overseas that were not being identified as collect calls. "There's nothing we can do, you have to pay and then complain", was the official response. "I'm not paying", was my official response. "We'll disconnect your service and sue you". "Go ahead. I'll sue you back for much more than a few hundred bucks." In the end, I won. They ate the bills and made it stop.