24 February 2010

A refund from 2ergo?

Posted by: Stephen Williams

There have been further developments in the case of the colleague who received a rogue, chargeable text on a service supplied by 2ergo Limited.

A week ago she got a text out of the blue entitled “FreeMsg” saying “This is NOT spam! Due to a technical error we owe you a small refund for text messages to your mobile. Please call 08448243696 so we can refund you.”

What to do?

The immediate reaction is that this is another scam. I mean seriously, given all the press articles about reverse charge numbers and the like, would anyone ring a number like that? A quick check on the PhonePayPlus website and the first thing one discovers is that the number is owned 2ergo Limited. The last time these guys sent us a text it cost us £3, so our first reaction was how much did this one cost?

After some discussion we decided to ring the number from a landline on the basis that it is hard to charge landlines for reverse bills or text them. The first thing that happened is that we got through to a recorded message (more alarm bells ringing). It is a polite, recorded message claiming to be from 2ergo and after a minute or so it asked us to input our mobile number so they could check it against their records and see if we are due a refund (surely they already have this as they texted us in the first place?). They also explained that a customer service rep would ring us to get our name and home address. At this point we put the phone down. We had no idea what to think. Is this genuine? Is it a further scam?

Is this another scam?

I truly don’t know whether this offer of a refund was genuine or not. However, this paranoia is a reflection of the lack of consumer trust in the whole premium rate industry. Just check out the the Scream forum to get a feeling for how deep it goes. You get a text from someone you don’t know and immediately think the worst. You seldom know who to trust in this industry and this is precisely the reason why PhonePayPlus needs to do so much more.

There is a worry we are sounding ungrateful here. If this is genuine then surely I should congratulate them. However, if you want to restore customers’ trust you need to do more than send a dodgy, anonymous, text pointing people to a recorded message.

What should 2ergo do?

Assuming it was a genuine attempt to refund the customer then the refund process should be much more seamless and engender trust.

2ergo have records of all customers who sent texts by Win4Fun. If it can’t identify genuine texts from those sent as a result of their technical error it should refund the lot. This list of numbers and amounts should be sent to the network operators who have the ability to credit the relevant accounts (or hold onto the credit until the PAYG is topped up). A short text to the customer telling them this has happened will be fine. Vodafone can clearly credit customers – it did so in this case when my colleague complained. Yes there are higher costs associated with this route but, sorry, once you have sent out rogue texts, the onus is on you to restore the trust.

The application of these simple rules would be in the customers’ interests and it is surely them we should be worrying about?

10 February 2010

PhonePayPlus need to adopt a zero tolerance policy

Posted by: Stephen Williams
zero tolerance

Hard measures needed

A random, unsolicited text appears on your phone. What do you do?

If you are like most people, you will growl with annoyance at what appears to be spam and then delete it, assuming that is the end of the matter.  Well, that is possibly a mistake as you might unwittingly have paid that spammer £3 just for receiving the text and by deleting it you have lost the evidence.

A simple fraud

A colleague in the office got the following text last the week from number 83023.

“Win4Fun!Last months winner grabbed £500!This months questions is Who sang the song Paparazzi?Txt Enter plus you answer 83023 care? 08445796354. Close 13/02.”

She hadn’t subscribed to anything or texted the number before and she definitely didn’t respond. However, after thinking about it she decided to check her mobile account online and saw that she had been charged £3 for receiving that text.

That is wrong. It is illegal and this is what PhonePayPlus, the regulator, was set up to stop. Well yes, in principal, but the system is broken.

Getting the money back

PhonePayPlus encourage you to use their number checker, on their website, which reveals the service provider to be 2ergo Limited. This is the same 2ergo that has 20 previous PhonePayPlus adjudications against services it has provided.  However, when she contacted 2ergo they explained they were just the aggregator and she would need to seek recompense from the content provider, Win4Fun… whoever they are.

Meanwhile, a complaint direct to PhonePayPlus solicited a call back. Whilst they were sympathetic to her complaint they explained that they could only investigate if they received 5-10 complaints from the public over any one service. They hadn’t received five complaints so in effect it was, “Terribly sorry but we will be adding to our files and we won’t be investigating further”.

A complaint to Vodafone resulted in an immediate, no quibble refund.

Too much hassle for £3?

The problem is of course that the charge for receiving the text is relatively small and the effort of recovering it so long winded and laborious that most people let it pass. If the rogue content provider is clever, they will have targeted contract-based, mobile phone users who seldom check their bills until the end of the month and by then have often deleted the offending message anyway. Add in the lack of faith that regulator will even investigate, is it any wonder that the public lose faith in premium rate industry?

Too many links in the chain?

Part of the problem is that it is unclear exactly who is policing these services. Vodafone is the network operator who takes the money off the customer. They in turn pass some of it to 2ergo who, as aggregator, have the contract with Win4Fun and deal with payments to them. With three levels in the chain it is all too easy to abdicate responsibility.

We need action

What is needed is for everyone in the chain to adopt a zero tolerance policy to these rogue services and create an environment where it is impossible for them to operate. Until the regulator gets a grip of this problem, acts quickly and bars these rogue services the problem will just go on.

20 previous adjudications against a service provider should be prima facie evidence of poor controls and poor business practices. This in itself should be grounds for investigation of any complaint from the public. My article uses just one example but it could so easily have been another service. In the last 3 months of 2009 PhonePayPlus published adjudications on 21 services and these were just the ones that a full warranted investigation (presumably because they each had 10 complaints or more). 2 Ergo Limited are in many ways the unfortunate carrier of the text in this instance, especially as there are many other aggregators who have way in excess of 20 adjudications involving services supplied by them. However, it highlights the fundamental nature of the problem.

We believe that PhonePayPlus needs to look at adopting a zero tolerance policy. Any complaint should be investigated and any complaint that is upheld should be punished. The fines and other punishment (such as withdrawal of licenses) should be increased so that the industry is forced put its house in order and rogue services find the cost of operating to be prohibitive.

11 November 2009

Are you being ripped off calling a 118 DQ service?

Posted by: Stephen Williams

118 services are still not coming clean about the true cost of directory enquires (DQ) calls. It is an amazing fact that after years of phone regulation it is still mind-boggling difficult to find out the cost of calling a DQ service from a mobile phone.

We have all heard or read statements similar to the one below when looking at an advert promoting a DQ service. 

“Calls to 118118 cost 79p per call, 29p per minute from most landlines. Mobile charges vary”

It’s an official statement, approved by the regulator and it is there to protect the public.  But hang on, what is the cost of making a call from a mobile?

Who uses a BT landline these days?

This is 2009. More and more of us use mobile phones and we don’t ring from a BT landline. From discussions I have had with industry insiders there are upwards of 50% of people calling DQ numbers from mobiles and in some age groups that figure is considerably higher. I have tried to get some evidence of the exact figure but I can’t find it anywhere on the web. Perhaps one of the DQ companies can come on line and tell us the correct figure?

So what is the cost of a call to a DQ service using a mobile phone and why don’t the DQ companies make it clear?

Well I thought I would try and find out how much it would cost. But rather than make the call and wait for the bill to come in I thought it would be good to find out before I made the call.

My thought process went, “I’m going to make a call to a DQ service so I will go on their website and find out the cost”.

Mission impossible

Ahem, it is not that straight forward. Indeed, it is next to impossible. I challenge anyone to find out the cost of mobile call to a 118 number by searching the specific DQ website. Next I rang someone at Yell to ask them what the price was. After a number of escalations within the organisation someone knowledgeable about these matters explained that part of problem is that the price varies by network. Since the prices vary the DQ companies are allowed to state “Refer to network operators for prices”.

So if you want to find out how much it costs you actually have to go to the network operators rather than the DQ companies to find out. That is strange, to say the least. It should not be too complicated for each DQ company to put a simple table showing the prices from each network operator on their website? Anyone would think they didn’t want to show them to us or they were in some way embarrassed?

So, onto the next stage of my search and a visit to the websites of each of the network operators.

In order to keep it all simple and make the comparisons work I chose to find out the prices of just one 118 service. I chose 118118 because back in 2007 they claimed to be the largest DQ suppliers with a market share of 53%.

The search for evidence proved quite difficult and the ease of finding information varied from site to site. I used the various website search engines and tried,  “Cost of a Directory Enquiries call” then, “Cost of a DQ call”  then, “cost of a call to 118118” and then, “Cost of a premium rate call”

Virgin ask you to call the team to find out this information. This call put me in a waiting list where unsurprisingly all of their operators were busy and expected wait time would be 20 minutes. I emailed instead and got an answer 2 days later.

T Mobile told me “for the cost of 118 refer to customer services”. However, a search on customer services brings up 100 hits, none of which is customer services unless you want a job. Eventually I emailed them and they called me back.

The numbers they don’t want to publish

Ok so what were the results? I have tabulated them below

Network

Fixed cost

Per min cost

Cost of a 1 minute call

O2

Zero

£1.00 per min

£1.00

Orange

£1.15

£0.40 per min

£1.55

Three

£1.22

£0.73 per min

£1.95

T Mobile

Zero

£1.50 per min

£1.50

Virgin

Zero

£1.00 per min

£1.00

Vodafone

£0.79

£0.49 per min (starting from  2nd minute

£0.79

For anyone new to DQ charging models the distinction between the “fixed cost” and the “cost per min” is actually very important. You see DQ services make money by keeping you connected. This is not just through the, “Do you need anything else sir?” but also when they ask, “Would you like us to connect you?” If you say yes the cost per minute keeps on ticking. If you are on T Mobile that clock is ticking at £1.50 per minute. You might only have connected to a standard number, perhaps the dentist or doctor, but all the time you are booking that appointment or describing your symptoms you are incurring a premium rate charge. It is enough to make you ill all over again.

 So what is the message ?

More people call DQ services (and other premium rate services) from a mobile than from BT. It is therefore misleading and inappropriate to quote charges from a BT landline especially when charges from some mobile networks are higher. Cost of calls from mobiles should be on the DQ website and be much more prominent and easy to find. If the pricing structures are too varied and take up too much space the industry should rationalise this. Pricing should be the same across all networks, as it is for texting.