My brother just contacted me and said that he had received a text from a company called 'Gamazing' say thank you for subscribing to their service (he hadn't) and by the way he would be charged £4.50 a week for the privilege unless he texted 'STOP' to them in the next 24 hours.
His mobile phone provider said he, or they, couldn't block these charges, which is stupid. He has texted the stop keyword to then but is obviously concerned how a company out of nowhere can just start hitting him for a service he has never heard of, let alone subscribed to.
Any of you chaps encountered this or a similar mobile phone scam?
Any good solutions for preventing this from happening in the future (short of my brother changing his number) ?
(pronounced: equal-sequel) "I suffered for my art.. now it's your turn"
Comments
its absolutely terrible nothing can be done.
https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Gamazing&src=spelling_expansion_revert_click
Three advise texting stop and contacting the 3rd party for a refund:
https://mobile.twitter.com/c_h_pugh/status/903595524212785152
I now have my phone set by ee that I can't be subscribed to these kinds of service.
I had something similar with Virgin a while back. A charge for 4.00 appeared on my mobile bill. I queried it with Virgin and they told me that this was probably how it had come about. I think they must be obliged to send the opt out (stop) option. I did recall receiving one from something like 'babemachine' but I didn't even bother opening it, presuming it to be a scam. Virgin were initially quite bullish that I must pay but once the operator revealed that 'we get loads of these' I managed to get the charge stopped and a stop put on all future txts. I only noticed as I never incur additional charges. I imagine if it were a heavy user they might not even notice the additional charge, which is probably how these scams work.
i havent had a scam text, but if theres a way to pre-block them it would be good to know.
I phoned Vodafone, and they blocked this kind of payment going out in future.
The problem is that this is enabled by default unless you ask for it to be disabled. The phone companies make more money that way.