Code of practice fails to protect mobile customers from rogue charges

Recently a friend got a mobile phone bill that showed a succession of SMS messages from a five-digit number she did not recognise. The total involved was approximately €40 over a one-month period.

A bit of a Luddite, she has a phone that can make calls and receive text messages and just about nothing else. It does not access the internet. She had no memory of receiving any out of the ordinary SMS messages, and does not use any premium rate SMS services other than the “when’s my next bus due” service.

Nevertheless there were a series of charges on her bill for SMS messages from 57495. They tended to come in clusters of five or six every few days, and cost her €1.62, plus VAT, a pop.

She went to her telecoms provider and a young man told her the number belonged to Mobilenobo, an outfit she had never heard of. He texted the word STOP to the number and, as far as she knows, the texts (which she is adamant she never received) are no longer being sent.

She asked for her money back but her phone service provider told her it wasn’t an issue for it. She contacted Comreg, which advised her to seek written proof from Mobilenobo that she had subscribed to their service. It was otherwise in no position to assist. She has since sent an email to Mobilenobo and that is as far as the saga has moved.

Bill scrutinised

In the spirit of investigative journalism this columnist scrutinised her bill. It shows a text to 57495 at 19.07 on December 22nd last (at a cost to her of 7 cent). Six texts then arrived between 19.17:38 and 19.17:43, at a cost of €1.62 each. These are the first communications to and from Mobilenobo as per her bill.

A phone call to Mobilenobo early yesterday afternoon was answered by a woman in a customer support centre in Dublin. She said that Mobilenobo was based in Cyprus and provided an email address. By yesterday evening there had been no response to an email sent to the address.

Mobilenobo, according to its website, has a large catalogue of licensed mobile content, including music, pictures and video.

A trawl on the internet revealed a number of references to difficulties similar to the one encountered by my friend. An O2 Forum conversation has a February 2012 posting from a customer who paid money to Mobilenobo for a service he or she said was never subscribed to. The answer from O2 was that it was a matter for the customer and the service provider. “O2 has a regulatory obligation to allow third-party service providers to access its network once their service has been authorised by the Regulator for Premium Rate Services (Comreg),” O2 said.

Last December Conor Pope, of this parish, reported how he had been contacted by a named reader who was charged for a series of SMS messages from Mobilenobo in mid-2012, even though he had no memory of every subscribing to the service. He said he used to get six simultaneous messages every Wednesday, at €1.62 (plus VAT) a pop.

Sellers of premium rate services to mobile phone users have to be authorised by Comreg, which has put in place a code of practice to govern their activities. Requests for custom must inform would-be subscribers of the service’s cost and a second, subscription confirmation message must be sent, and responded to positively, before any customer can be charged.

There may be innocent explanations for the experiences above, but the system appears to make it uncomfortably easy for people to have money taken out of their pockets. Everything about the Comreg code of practice seems predicated on an awareness of this. Mobile phones are a wonderful development, but they can propel their owners into a 24/7 marketplace, where some of the sellers are pushy.

Text messaging services can remind you to put your bin out, keep you up to date with your football team’s performance, and tell you when the next bus is coming. But just because the services being provided are legion shouldn’t mean the phone-owning public is left feeling besieged.