When premium rate texts won't go away

Patrick Rowley-Brooke contacted us with “a cautionary tale” that has cost him almost €137.

“While I was abroad, in June, I received a series of text messages from 57495 that I had not solicited,” he writes. He deleted the messages and hoped they would go away. “They didn’t and I began getting six messages in one go. My bills were high but I assumed that this was the result of data roaming abroad but when I saw my last bill relating to the period when I should not have had any roaming charges, I realised that I’d been had.”

Each of these rogue message had cost him €1.62 and he was getting six simultaneous messages every Wednesday, so he had run up “a sizeable bill for something I neither wanted nor asked for.

He contacted 3 Mobile “and they claimed it was nothing to do with them and they were not responsible even though they took the money from me. They gave me a number to contact but as this was a premium rate number I decided not to.”

He phoned ComReg who were very helpful “and gave me a number to ring to find out how the texter (Mobile NoBo) found my number. They were to be given 10 working days to send me by post their method.

He attempted to make contact on four occasions in August but heard nothing.

“After 10 days I contacted ComReg and they said they would investigate; however, when I rang on October 8th I was told that the problem had been passed to the Premium Rate department who would be in touch. I received a reassuring message on November 21st that they were continuing to investigate but that I should contact them if the texter was still charging me.

“The moral is that as soon a you receive unwanted premium rate messages, text STOP and they should cease – though it’s apparent that this is not always the case.

“The second moral is to either receive itemised bills snail-mail or to check online bills carefully.”