Premium rate texts prove unstoppable
A PREMIUM rate text service – want-tone club – is giving this particular INQ hack a major headache. Despite phone calls, emails and text messages, the content provider - Tanla Mobile - just won't stop sending the texts.
It turns out that Tanla is the very same company that an INQ reader complained about back in January 2007 here.
One of the problems is that your own mobile network provider – in this case, Orange – has no powers to stop these messages being added to your bill. You have no course of action other than to complain to Phonepayplus (the artistes formerly known as ICSTIS).
Theoretically, you should be able to put an end to the annoyance by texting the word 'stop' to the shortcode which the provider is using, in this case 82600.
The catch is that, in this instance, nothing happens. This also highlights
another problem. Official advice differs on the exact form the message should
take. Tanla itself says 'stop' should work.
Yet the official advice on the Phonepayplus web site says it should be 'STOP
ALL' or 'STOP'.
Anyway, the INQ tried phoning up the number given in the text by Tanla which, for a change, isn't a premium rate service as well. All you get is an automated system which takes note of your mobile phone number and says the messages will stop. But they don't.
So you try emailing the company. A few days later, Tanla's customer support desk phoned up and said the messages have been stopped. The very next day, the three messages – charged at £1.50 a piece, bringing the total to £4.50 a week – arrived again.
The INQ tried to access the bill for this particular phone online but the Orange UK web site has a problem, which we first reported here.
So resorting to the good old dog and bone, Orange finally informed us that, just this month alone, Tanla has charged £18 so far.
We contacted Phonepayplus who informed us that complaints like this have to
be investigated thoroughly and take time.
Interestingly, Phonepayplus also informed us that it does have powers to force
refunds – which didn't seem to be the case last time we investigated.
It does mean, however, that Tanla can go on charging its £4.50 a week until the wheels finally grind into action. There is one ray of hope, though. If enough people complain to Phonepayplus, it can trigger its 'Emergency Procedure' which will stop the service until an investigation has been completed.
So if enough of you who are suffering at the hands of Tanla/82600 complain via the Phonepayplus web site, then the messages might stop before the INQ's bill reaches £50. µ
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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.

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.
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
It's called C4, and it is to be placed between the company's servers and its CEO before detonation.
You'll think twice about texting singles in your local area next time wont you, Tony?
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.
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 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...
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.
Fines from Phone Pay Plus are quite high for minor infractions. Go ahead and take a look at recent fines!

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.
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....
"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.