Phone Fraud - The New Normal

[Seano]

Never been motivated enough to enage with any communities but my experience with iFitness and O2 has woken me up to how destructive behaviours become normal. I mentioned in other posts how I discovered iFitness via O2, had over time charged £96 for a service I never signed up for, and never used. O2's response was in effect - 'nothing to do with me officer'. If you say it often enough, and give the impression of authority, you can normalise this behaviour, first with your customers, that you have no reponsibility, which is simply a way of evading returning money. More worrying for us as a society, is that the organisation convinces itself that they have no responsibilty, that it is normal that they wash their hands of this, that it is normal that they enable 3rd parties to take money from your bank account. This new normal becomes embedded in a business culture, governing the way the business behaves in the world. Even Apple who have my bank details, when I buy something from iTunes they ask if am I sure I want to buy. Big brands and organisation, who enable the unauthorised taking money from your account, and then normalise the idea that they have no responsibility is a little bit scary...'nothing to do with me sir...' Anyway, hopefully will get some refund from iFitness and will be leaving O2 after 16 years, wiser, and a bit sad, and probably naive, that this is where we are. 

[MI5]

We have community help here
https://community.o2.co.uk/t5/How-to-Guides/Have-you-fallen-for-or-been-conned-into-a-premium-rate-s...

[Bambino]

@Seano You need to understand that these kinds of charges do not magically appear on people's accounts. It doesn't happen to everyone. It's almost certain that they're there because you inadvertently clicked on a link on a social media site, and O2 cannot control that. Some people actually subscribe to these services willingly. Nor can O2 be responsibe for you not being aware that the charges had accumulated, and that you owe as much as you do. Had you checked your account more frequently, you would have caught this earlier.

O2 have offered to put bars on your account. It is possible that there has been an error on their side regarding putting the bars on, but it sounds as if the damage has already been done. You are certainly entitled to change providers, but you should check what your coverage would be before you do. You obviously never had an issue with O2 if you've been a long standing customer. You might want to consider that before you leave because of a mistake of your own making.

[Seano]

Thanks Bambino, yes you're right. It has been a very expensive lesson. Yes it was my responsibility to check my account to keep an eye on things.  An expensive lesson! My phone may have clicked (as it often makes ghost phone calls) on an ad on a internet page or whatever - though the idea that clicking on a page accidentally, entitles a company to take money from your bank account, without giving any details is quite worrying. As for leaving, yes it was my mistake not checking my account. Though my point is, perhaps from a position of naivity, it never occurred to me that my phone company would enable this. And staying with O2 would be doubling down on this naivity. So yes I could have checked, but ultimately I don't think it is the victim's fault. Thanks for checking in about this Bambino, seriously it has reminded me that in future, even with the added customer safety provided by EE, or whoever I go with, I will definitley check my charges every month! 

[Bambino]

@Seano I hope you didn't take my previous comments in the wrong way. If you search the forum you will see that what happened to you is a common occurrence. Yours was a little more expensive than most. I didn't mean what I said to be pontificating, and  I agree that O2 could do more to protect their customers, as EE does. I don't think it would take much to do that, but O2 at the moment aren't doing much for their customers in a lot of areas, so this is just another to add to the list of complaints. Good luck with your new network, if you decide to leave.:smileywink:

[Payforit_Sucks]

@Seano

I'm sorry you've been affected by one of these 'Payforit' scams.

@Bambinohas implied that you may have clicked a link, or taken some other action to start a subscription.

The 'official' advice is that you must have 'inadvertently' clicked a link. Actually, to legitimately sign up for these services you need to have clicked on a box saying 'Subscribe for £3.00/wk' and then clicked on a box saying 'Confirm this charge to your phone account'. If you didn't see these boxes and click on them you've been scammed. So many people are becoming subscribed to these 'services' without knowingly giving consent that something is seriously wrong.

There is  large body of evidence that malware and malicious code in web pages is responsible for many of these subscriptions.

Please don't give up on getting your money back. Don't let the scammers win, as the law is on your side in getting your money back.

Ask PMConnect (who run iFitness) for your money back. If they refuse, try to get them to put that in writing. Don't allow them to waste your time arguing. Then send a 'letter before action', insisting on a refund, to their registered company address:

PM Connect Ltd

4th Floor

Colmore Gate

2-6 Colmore Row

Birmingham

B3 2QD

The letter should give them a reasonable time, say 3 weeks, to provide a refund. If they fail to respond to the letter before action, take action through the Small Claims Court. It will cost £25 to do this, which will be added to your claim.

To date, none of these companies has sought to defend a claim, and they have paid out, usually on receipt of the letter before action.

Comprehensive information and advice on this course of action is given in the faq linked in my signature. This includes a sample 'letter before action' which you can use as a template for your own.

Feel free to come back to me if any further help is needed.

Paul

[Seano]

Thanks Paul for taking the time to post this info, really useful. Had a conversation with an operator at iFitness, sent a follow-up email which they apparentyl reply to in 2 working days, and if they don't respond fairly, I will follow these steps,

[scammers454363]

Same postion as you on this one, never even downloaded i fitness its not even in my app log for installs on play store, total scam this is !

[Adi7]

> You need to understand that these kinds of charges do not magically appear on people's accounts. It doesn't happen to everyone. It's almost certain that they're there because you inadvertently clicked on a link on a social media site, and O2 cannot control that. Some people actually subscribe to these services willingly.

Certain third parties and services – including iFitness – are known offenders. The network providers should flag, if not block completely, any transactions associated with them. For the networks to play dumb and tell customers that these charges appear to be valid is disingenuous.


> Had you checked your account more frequently, you would have caught this earlier.

True but that doesn't shift the blame to the customer. If I stole from a shop and they didn't notice, that doesn't make it okay.


> You might want to consider that before you leave because of a mistake of your own making.

It's well documented that software exploits and other tricks can be used to fool people into subscribing without them noticing. The networks developed the Payforit mechanism which is flawed. Which part of this is the customer's mistake?