Charges for receiving competition sms? How do you stop it?

Drugness

Hello all
My brother has been receiving tests from the following number 353863810442. These texts typically ask a question about a celebrity giving 3 possible answers.
A typical question goes like: "GMTV question.... what celebrity had her car crushed for refusing to pay tax? Was it A) *** *** etc etc". The GMTV part is accurate to the sms by the way.

He says he is being charged roughly €2 a pop for receiving these sms. There is no 'plus' sign before the 353 in the number so i assume these are sent from a web source. Is this correct?
The problem is that he doesnt recall signing up for anything apart from sending an sms in response to a competition advertised on Aertel. I dont have any more details apart from it being a competition to supposedly be in with a chance to win €50k, something like that.
How do i stop him from receiving these sms in future. Replying with the word 'stop' doesnt seem to work and these sms are arriving daily.

Can anyone give any advice here?

Also is my bro right in saying he is being charged €2/sms.

Obviously he's being stung here so i want to try to help him here

Many thanks in advance everyone

Regards

DG

brightkane

did he try replying stop to the txt? seems to be an advertised way to stop the recent ones

foggy_lad

check out the RegTel site it gives detailed info on premium rate numbers and if this is no help try ringing you bro's metwork provider and ask if they can find out what company are sending the texts hope this helps get it stopped.

Bluefrog

If you see a shortcode in the message - something like 57830 for example you can check who is sending the SMS message on the regtel website - they have a shortcode lookup service.

You can attempt to text 'stop' (without the quotes) to the shortcode and if that doesn't work you need to contact Regtel.

These companies are the lowest form of life.

elderlemon

353863810442 is not a premium rate number so there is no way he's being charged for it. He needs to look at his bill again.

voyager

My daughter had a problem similar to this and as advised in an earlier post she text the word "stop" back to the number in question that applied to her case and it worked, worth a try at least

voyager.

Random

elderlemon wrote: »

353863810442 is not a premium rate number so there is no way he's being charged for it. He needs to look at his bill again.

It is possible that it's related to a premium rate service.

I would suggest you contact your operator who can help you get unsubscribed.

Sam Vimes

i find it odd that loads of people suggested he text stop when he said he already had. But anyway OP, if texting stop didn't work then go onto the o2 website, log in as him and look for the option to view recent calls. You might see a shortcode there (5xxxx) loads of times with 2 euro charges next to them. If not call o2. They're giving the money to someone so they know exactly who it is and will be able to help you

by the way, you page you don't know of anything he did except enter a competition. That's all it takes. By any chance, does he remember the number he texted? Or is it still on aertel?

krudler

that number is an opera telecom number if im not mistaken, just ring o2 customer care and theyll stop it, theyll give you a contact number to call the company too so he can query how they got his number but its most likely from entering a competition himself,texting stop never works just get the network to email the company and request they unsubscribe him

Random

Commander Vimes wrote: »

i find it odd that loads of people suggested he text stop when he said he already had. But anyway OP, if texting stop didn't work then go onto the o2 website, log in as him and look for the option to view recent calls. You might see a shortcode there (5xxxx) loads of times with 2 euro charges next to them. If not call o2. They're giving the money to someone so they know exactly who it is and will be able to help you

by the way, you page you don't know of anything he did except enter a competition. That's all it takes. By any chance, does he remember the number he texted? Or is it still on aertel?

I'm confused as to how he can login to the website as them?

Sam Vimes

ciaranfo wrote: »

I'm confused as to how he can login to the website as them?

its his brother. i'm assuming they will at some point in the future be in the same room together and that there will be an internet enabled computer in said room and that together they can take over the world log into the site

Random

Sorry... I misread you completely. I thought you were suggesting he login to the 086 number messaging him. My bad.

As for the charge .. they'll show ex VAT so it'll probably be about €1.65 or so.

theking

DRI have a good article on what your brother's options are.
http://www.digitalrights.ie/2005/11/08/dealing-with-sms-spam/

subway

i had a similar problem before.
while your going about it, complain to regtel.

there a whole lot of minute laws that some operators are fairly lax about complying with.
my gf got signed up to one of these things,
we complained and got a cheque for 70 euro from opera because they used the letter e instead of the word euro in one of the texts which is against the rules

MuPpItJoCkEy

Hi people,

I am currently receiving these texts and now they are getting more frequent and it's costing 1.65 for each text received.

The number is "353863810442"

I have not subscribed to anything or entered any competitions but I wouldn't rule out someone doing so on my behalf as it seems easy enough to set up people on this kind of crap.

I have contacted O2 which I found to be fairly useless regarding this matter but I have been with them years and have usually been fairly good with any other query in the past.

Whilst writing out this post, I have also been researching at the same time (who says blokes can't multitask) and I have come across inform O2 couldn't give me over the phone as they didn't seem to know what to do but on their website, there is information on what to do and even have the shortcode for this number.

http://www.o2online.ie/wps/wcm/connect/O2/Home/Personal/Help/Help+&+Support/Calling+&+messaging#

Click on Premium and here is the information you find regarding that number:

Interactive Voice Budget - 01 4887210 customer@ivtech.ie 353863810442 shortcode = 57052

(Not sure I'm allowed to post links on here so apologises in advance if I've done something wrong)

I'm personally going to contact RegTel myself to complain as I have been charged and I am not sure how easy it is going to be to get refunded but I'd would suggest to anybody else out there getting pested by this to alert RegTel also.

Hope this helps.

MarkR

Going from the previous post the OP's brother should text stop to 57052. Oops, looks like it was mentioned in the text. Shoddy stuff though if reply stop doesn't work.!

MuPpItJoCkEy

Well just an update, I text stop to 57052 and got a reply from 353863833364 saying "You have been stopped from the QUIZ service and will not receive any more premium messages." which on one hand is good but what I would still like to know is how they got my number.

I am still going to demand a refund from the quiz operator and also contact RegTel because since this post, I have been talking about it to other people in work where a fair amount seemed to know exactly what had happened as they had been caught up with things like this themselves .

As it turns out, getting charged 1.65 was quiet cheap compaired to what some of the others got charged too and if these messages now stop, it doesn't seem like it I went through as much difficulty as some others either!

Anyway, the more people who complain, the better because people need more protection from these scam artists.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

mistress_gi

Thanks for this guys!
I was being charged without knowing!
I answered (a couple of months ago) to one of these txt competitions and was convinced that they would charge me for the reply to the txt not to the received txt! So I've lost so much money! No wonder I never had money on my phone!
Damn these money sucking bast**ds!

eirebhoy

Just to let people know, I emailed customer@modeva.ie requesting a refund and they obliged.

Dear Mr

On the 25th August at 16:30:07 your number was entered in on our website for a chance to win a trip to Lanzarote. At 16:30:17 you were sent a text message asking you to confirm the pin number provided back on our website to enter into the competition which, at 16:30:26, was done. You were then sent a text message providing you with all the information that had previously been stated on our web site outlining the subscription including the cost, frequency, our contact details and how to stop the service by simply sending stop.

We received instruction to stop the service on the 11th November and the service was stopped for you.

Although you subscribed to the service you obviously misunderstood or did not read the information we provided. As a result we are happy to issue you a refund. Please confirm your full name and a postal address where you wish to have your refund cheque sent

Regards

I don't know how much I'm going to get but considering it was taking €2 every 4 days of the last few weeks I could be getting up to €40. God knows how it went that long before I noticed.

LoadedNapalm

THank you so much MuPpItJoCkEy!!!! I was gettin texts once a week off these scum and i haven't a clue how!Couldn't reply to the texts they sent me with the word stop. The 5 digit code works a treat :) THANK YOU!!!

I'm going to email that address and hope i'll get a refund

MuPpItJoCkEy

LoadedNapalm wrote: »

THank you so much MuPpItJoCkEy!!!! I was gettin texts once a week off these scum and i haven't a clue how!Couldn't reply to the texts they sent me with the word stop. The 5 digit code works a treat :) THANK YOU!!!

I'm going to email that address and hope i'll get a refund

Your more than welcome and I hope you get refunded everything that your owed. I'm just glad this helps people.

aniolar

Thanks folks. Great help. Those leaches need to be shut down but they probably have friends in high places. Society has an element of unashamed greed that runs all the way up! Me feiners!

JUSTaCURIOCITY

MuPpItJoCkEy wrote: »

Your more than welcome and I hope you get refunded everything that your owed. I'm just glad this helps people.

WELL - I HAVE TO ADMIT- YOU HELPED ME TOO
THANK YOU FOR YOUR HONEST AND STRONG ATTITUDE TO MAKE THIS **** SERVICE ET BETTER.
I SEND MY COMPLAIN WITH DEMAND OF REFUND TO ::pac:
customer@modeva.ie & customer@ivtech.ie -Interactive Voice Budget (WHO HAVE 57052)
info@regtel.ie -REGtEL
info@dataprotection.ie -The Data Protection Commissioner

I ALSO ATTACHED LIST OF BILL SHOWING EXACTLY TIME AND AMOUND AND NUMBER THEY RIPPED ME OFF MONEY FROM MY ACCOUNT, PDF ATTACHED OF WEBSITES AND COMPETITIONS I WAS IN...
NOW CROSS FINGERS