Here is the background, my mother is an elderly lady that uses a basic Non-Smartphone Vodafone handset that has Facebook integration, though she doesn’t have Facebook or use the internet on her phone. She uses the phone to receive calls and for emergencies. Her usage is tiny.
She keeps about $100 on the phone, using prepaid which expires after 365 days. Plenty of credit.
She receives notification from Vodafone that she only has $10 left, it surprises her so she rings Vodafone. Vodafone tell her incorrectly that it is due to background data usage. She puts $30 on her phone. A couple weeks later, she again gets notification that she only has $10 left.
She rings Vodafone and they tell her that she is subscribed to a premium SMS service that charges $6 per message. The subscription is called MyWinner and she had been receiving and ignoring idiotic quiz SMSs such as “How many days are there in the month of September”.
Vodafone say they will block the number so she will no longer receive SMSs from MyWinner and from my Mother’s perspective, that’s that. When I hear the story I am extremely unsettled. My mother has no idea what an SMS subscription is, what a premium SMS is or how one would subscribe to it. From my perspective she has fallen for a scam. I try to keep her educated with internet and data security but obviously more education is required.
I ring Vodafone back to get Premium SMS services blocked completely and her data service stopped so there are no more surprises.
So being extremely angry, I ask why they let this stuff happen. Vodafone accepts no responsibility.
Now my judgement may be clouded with anger but my issues are:
- Vodafone initially advised her incorrectly that is was data usage
- They didn’t ask my mother if she would like ALL premium SMSs blocked.
- They didn’t educate my mother on how to avoid this in the future
- If Vodafone doesn’t get any revenue from these premium SMSs then I agree that Vodafone has no responsibility for the charges (akin to an ISP delivering an email with your bank details to a Nigerian Prince), however, if Vodafone does take a cut of the premium SMS revenue, I would argue that Vodafone is helping to facilitate these scams and profiting from them.
I feel my mother has been burnt and learnt her lesson and it shouldn’t happen again but how many other naïve elderly people are being scammed. Around $100 over a couple of months is pretty significant and scale that out to 1000s of people, it’s a huge sum of money.
I feel Telcos should have some responsibility in regulating these Premium SMS services. If they are identified as a scam, they should be shut down.
So, the questions I want to throw out to the Ozbargainers are:
- Am I being rational?
- Does anyone know if Telcos get a cut of the Premium SMS revenue and if so how can we get Vodafone to admit some responsibility
- How can the community ensure this doesn’t happen?
Vodafone does not get any revenue from premium SMS. If Vodafone misinformed your mother then any fees from that point onwards should be refunded to you, however the user has to reply as a form of 'opt in' in order to be charged for premium SMSes. They have a option at the point of sign-up to block premium SMSes completely. Your anger should be directed at the operators of premium SMS services and not Vodafone.