e-ignite

A strange thing happened to me the other day. I realised that I’d used way over my “free minute” quota on my mobile, so I logged into my O2 Online account to check just how much I had been stung for the extra calls. I got 2 surprises - one good and one bad. The good thing being that it turns out O2 have started giving out rollover minutes - this has only taken about 5 years of me being with the company, so good thing! The bad thing was that I had been charged for a premium rate “multimedia service” that I received. I never use these premium text services, and since starting my account with O2 about 5 years ago, not one of these messages has ever left or arrived at my phone. So why now…?

It turned out that I had received a Multimedia Content Message from 88039 and was charged £1.28 + VAT for the pleasure. I had not subscribed to these messages, nor had I sent one to the number.
I first phoned O2 customer services and was put through to a nice young girl on the phone who tried to help, but couldn’t even open my online bill from her workstation! She explained some things to me (that I already knew) and suggested that I’d possibly been voting in the X-Factor - I hadn’t. That’s not cool.

So after several more suggestions of where I may have incurred the charges, I didn’t seem to be getting through to her that I didn’t use these things. The best thing she could say was that I should text the word “STOP” to the number to stop it from happening again. She couldn’t grasp why I wasn’t happy about losing another wad of money to do so. After that, I was told that O2 could do nothing for me - not even give me a contact number or name of the company that sent it. According to her, I must have subscribed to it at some point and just don’t remember, so it’s my problem.
Deeply dissatisfied, I turned to a web search and found an extremely interesting blog entry from someone with a similar experience.? As it turns out, they had received up to 8 messages and was charged for them all. I tried calling the 0871 numbers posted by other blog users on the above page, but when I got through to the operator, they checked my number and said they hadn’t sent the message. I didn’t believe them and asked a few questions about who else could send messages from the 88039 shortcode. Apparently, they were the main message delivery outfit, but several others could do so. Great.

So nearly admitting defeat, I turned to submit a complaint with ICSTIS - the UK’s premium rate telephone services regulator. They have a eat little page that lets you “WHOIS” a number. Within seconds, I found that 88039 was actually run by a company called 2 Ergo Ltd. I also got their contact details:

Phone: 01706 221777

Address:
St Marys Chambers
Haslingdon Road
Rawtenstall
Lancashire
BB4 6QX

So I reached for my phone and called The Enemy on the number given, all ready to give them a piece of my mind. However, the phone was answered straight away by a woman who was actually very pleasant. I explained the problem and she said “Oh, I bet I know what company that was… let me just check your number…” and she searched the database for messages that had been sent to me. Bingo - one message, she gave me the cost and the date it was sent, and she then told me that they had received hundreds of complaints about these. The company actually sending the messages was called “767 Media” who have apparently gone AWOL - they had been using random number generation to send out thousands of messages that users were charged £1.50 a time to receive. 2 Ergo Ltd are simply delivery agents for companies like 767 Media, but because of this particular scam, 2 Ergo Ltd were providing the refunds themselves and were pursuing their costs via “other channels”. So within 2 minutes of a phonecall to “The Enemy” (who used a normal UK geographic number that is therefore cheap to phone btw), I was given an apology, a full explanation, and I was promised a cheque refund by the end of the week!

It’s sad that purveyors of rip-off mobile phone content have a better, more helpful helpline than a multinational company like O2. But I’m happy in the way it’s turned out so far (although if the cheque doesn’t arrive / bounces, you’ll be hearing more from me!) and I can offer this advice:

If you receive messages from, or are billed for content from 88039, telephone 2 Ergo Ltd on 01706 221777, and ask nicely for a refund.