- Saturday, 14 November 2009
- INQ Mobile
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Intergrerty -- we've never heard of it - Doc Spinola of that ilk
Premium rate text mystery solved
THE INQ'S RUN-IN with mobile content supplier 2comm and text aggregator Tanla Mobile has reached an interesting conclusion. Apparently Orange has allocated too many numbers to the handset in question.
According to 2comm's CTO Tony Kelly, Orange provided its early customers with separate telephone numbers for voice, fax and data. So when he was searching for records of the INQ's earlier transactions, they proved very difficult to find.
Kelly claims that, while the texts appeared to be sent to the handset's voice number, his company's system was actually tracking the handset's data number.
Curiously, this didn't appear to prevent the company's accounts system from billing the handset correctly. But Kelly reckons it is the reason why efforts to halt the arrival of further texts by sending the word 'Stop' didn't work.
2comm has now promised the INQ a full refund. However, it's a mystery why such a situation came to exist in the first place. Both Tanla and 2comm are well-established players in this market.
Kelly has promised to take the matter up with the industry enforcer – Phonepayplus (PPP) – to try to ensure the situation doesn't arise in future.
It's taken the INQ's full media mightiness and strenuous efforts to reveal that the problem existed in the first place, however. From our mailbag we know that the INQ isn't alone in complaining about over-billing of premium rate texts. µ
See also ... Premium rate texts prove unstoppable
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and tell them this is a "red card" event. There is no legitamate way Tanla could have got consent to sent those messages to your data number, so they are sending fraudulent SMS message. Orange will cut them off on the spot
Tanla and 2comm have been fined a total of £11,500 for three separate billing 'mistakes'.

Tanla and various other providers have been fined many tens of thousands of pounds for numerous cases of billing 'errors'.

The fines are subject to the Communications Act 2003 and cannot exceed 10% of what is billed in 'error'.

How much is Orange and the other Network Operators making from these 'errors'.
"Kelly claims that, while the texts appeared to be sent to the handset's voice number, his company's system was actually tracking the handset's data number [this] is the reason why efforts to halt the arrival of further texts by sending the word 'Stop' didn't work."

Funny then that 2Comm/Tanla told PhonePayPlus that 'Stop' didn't work because of a "system failure" during a time when only skeleton staff were manning the premises.

Judge for yourself how much trust we should put in anything Mr Kelly has to say, do a bit of Googling: "Go To Bed Ltd"; "Flying lessons"; "Ian Vaughan"; "3Business" "Alan Scott"; "James McAteer"; "One Goal Ltd"; and "MMs3".

or just go to: http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/consumers/adjudications/default.asp?cmd=3&id=751
Seriously.
I mean, come on.

I work for a mobile content provider (same crappy premium sms's) and we'd be raked over the coals by phonepayplus if we did anything like that. I have never even heard of anything as described above with orange and even if it were the case, I suspect that failure to marry up the phone numbers would be a regulatory failure in it's own right. 

John is right though, it's a red card event - but orange haven't been as forceful with these as o2 and voda have recently
Sorry, that should have been "Off To Bed" - same thing when I am talking to my children, but not in this case!
In response to g maybe if you worked for a larger premium sms company you would know this issue! We reported it to Orange and to PPP - no response - the only good thing was though I was told 2comm had reported as well! Maybe the networks who take a vast majortiy should look at their own procedures.