I recently discovered a company called SB7 Mobile has charged me £4.50 a week for 66 weeks. It looks as though I’ve paid £297 for simply receiving texts. I realise I should have been more on top of my mobile bills, but I have no recollection of signing up to this. I’d assumed the texts were spam and that I would be charged £4.50 only if I responded.
LG, London
Thousands of mobile phone users have been similarly caught by so-called “subscription services”. They will typically have signed up inadvertently by replying to a text or pop-up ad, or entering an online competition. What few realise is that you do not have to enter your bank details for a premium-rate service to charge – your mobile phone number is all that’s needed, which is why Which? recommends treating your mobile number like a credit card.
In your case, you were not being charged to receive the texts. You were paying £4.50 to be entered into a weekly competition. The texts, sent monthly, invited you to reply STOP if you wanted to end the service, but because you assumed they were spam, you were wary of replying in case you triggered a charge. Online forums report identical experiences with SB7 Mobile Ltd.
It was fined £30,000 by the premium-rate regulator, Phone-Paid Services Authority (PSA), in 2010 for three “significant” breaches of its code and it is currently investigating the company again.
My request for a comment from SB7 Mobile unleashed a volley of solicitors’ letters threatening legal action if its name was published.
It also prompted a full refund from the company. Bizarrely, after three weeks of insisting that you knowingly signed up to the service, and providing the terms and conditions it claims you were sent, it discovered that it had nothing to do with your subscription.
It was, it now says, a company called SP Two Ltd, which signed you up six months before SB7 Ltd took it over in November 2016.
Both have the same two directors and the same registered address, but SP Two said it would only comment to the Observer if I omitted SB7’s name from the column and SB7 will only state, on the record, it is “not responsible for the service in question”.
The PSA says complaints about competition services have dropped from more than 1,000 in September 2016 to 49 a year later, after it introduced tighter conditions. However, it admits there is still a problem. “Subscription services of this type are a concern for some consumers, who find themselves billed for content they did not believe they had signed up for. We’d recommend contacting your mobile service provider in the first instance. If this does not resolve the issue, contact us.”
If you need help email Anna Tims at your.problems@observer.co.uk or write to Your Problems, The Observer, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Include an address and phone number. Submission and publication are subject to our terms and conditions
