A (non-technical) Mobile Problem

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hey all, hope it's okay to post this question here, and I'll happily remove it if not. It involves a problem I'm having...
Basically, I have an 11 year old daughter. We bought her a phone after she started school because it's a way away, and we wanted a way she could contact us, say if she needs to come home early or misses a bus. It also lets her keep in touch with friends.

Out of the blue, she received totally unsolicited texts that instructed "click here now." She replied "who is this?" The response, a day or so later, was "Click here NOW". She clicked.
It linked directly to porn. Hardcore. Uncensored. No age checks, warnings or anything.

T-Mobile are now billing me over £30 for this "service" (the service, presumably being that of delivering unwanted porn to my underage daughter without my knowledge). When I complain, they tell me it's not their problem - and that the charge comes from Switchfire Ltd.

If I want to dispute the charge, they say, I have to take it up with Switchfire. Now I've never heard of Switchfire and have no contract with them. My contract is with T-Mobile. But they refuse to drop the charge, saying they won't get involved. Even though they are involved: they are the ones trying to take my money and give it to someone who sent unsolicited porn to my child.

Now I'm going to take it up with Switchfire, and who knows how that will go. But in the meantime, T-Mobile have told me, in essence, that I have 14 days to decide to settle, or they may attack my credit rating...

Advice? Ideas?

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Heard of this sort of thing before, providers wont help. Did some digging around and this was posted, not sure if it'll work as it has mixed responses:

 

I would get in touch with the local police force, preferably the cybercrime and child exploitation units. Forcing hardcore material on juveniles is a crime and Switchfire could end up in a lot of trouble (and rightfully so, bring those bastiches down) for doing something like this.

 

Could you not also request a change of number from T-Mobile? As that would at least stop them being able to continually spam and rack up more costs to you in the meantime whilst you sort the thing out?

 

My misses was in a similar situation. She was receiving texts and being charged having not requested the service. We called O2 and they said they couldn't see her requesting the service but it could've been done online? anyways, we had to send emails to O2 - stating if they cannot prove she requested the service then how can they charge her for it? innocent until proven guilty... emails went back and forth... in the end we threatened with legal action and the charges came off the bill.

 

thanks FreshenUp it helped me

 

PhonePayPlus (formerly ICSTIS) are the regulator in charge of this, it's definitely worth getting in touch.

If you get no joy, a letter to the executive office of T-Mobile, with PhonePayPlus and OFCOM cc'd will probably sort this out very quickly.

- Gav

 

I'm not sure how much success you'd actually have with this, they could argue that as T-Mobile say you have to be at least 18 years old to sign up for the phone in the first place the assumption would be that the phone wouldn't be used by someone under that age. Obviously in this modern age thats fairly obviously complete cruft but still..

They also have the argument that as far as they are concerned someone has 'signed up' to this service from that number.