Watch your airtime

that's a good article for an early Monday :)

agreed: take the time to check who is taking your money + delete anything unsolicited + do not follow links sent to you via SMS for marketing purposes....a lot of the current nonsense also appears to be oversease companies trying their luck
 
...wish that vodacom/cellc/mtn will pull it out of their behinds and provide us their clients with a opt out and black listing function.

other thing thats been boggling my mind why do we have to pay R1-R2 for a cancellation sms.
 
Heres an idea. If someone takes money from you without your consent, does that not fall under the legal definition of theft or fraud? Thats what I did.

Noticed a charge the one day and called them to ask for proof that I had signed up. They wouldnt provide it and told me I had to sms to cancel. So I went to the cops and laid a theft charge. Then called the wasp back with the case number and told them to expect the police. Oddly I never got billed again. :)
 
friedpiggy said:
Heres an idea. If someone takes money from you without your consent, does that not fall under the legal definition of theft or fraud? Thats what I did.

Noticed a charge the one day and called them to ask for proof that I had signed up. They wouldnt provide it and told me I had to sms to cancel. So I went to the cops and laid a theft charge. Then called the wasp back with the case number and told them to expect the police. Oddly I never got billed again. :)
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Did you get your money back?
 
According to an industry source there is nothing stopping a rogue WASP from billing any cellular number it gets its hands on.

sounds just like the banks. Anyone with the ability to run debit orders, and have your bank details can include you in the run - without your permission. The attitude of the bank: sort it out with the rogues that created the debit order schedule

so much for consumer protection in this country
wonder how long Vodacom, MTN knew about this and simply kept quiet?
 
Never made the mistake of subscribing to any such service. I keep a close watch on my expenses on my phone so would notice if any charges came up.
 
froot said:
Never made the mistake of subscribing to any such service. I keep a close watch on my expenses on my phone so would notice if any charges came up.
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there seems to be an issue with some providers where you are not aware of unsubscribing to anything so it is a good idea to do what you do and check anyway
 
Article is misleading and inaccurate. Vodacom have a very strict criteria on who may do OBS billing through them - it requires testing and an OK from Vodacom.

2nd MTN requires a second opt in message and CellC has limited its billing platform to a very select few.

3rd The opt out message may not cost more than R1.00
 
I think subscription premium SMS should be stopped. No argument. It is either abused (do you really need to pay R5/week for crappy poems???), or things like those listed in the article crop up.

The legitimate uses of subscription premium rated SMS in my experience has been negligible. And I am sure that there are alternative ways for legitimate services to collect money e.g. debit order, regular non-subscription premium rated SMS after a reminder has been sent etc.
 
All the Cellphone operators should indicate clearly on the bill each month the WASPS a name, contact number, the amount(s) and a reference number. Customers should then be able to provide this reference number to any cellphone operator and they should be able to "Block" the WASP on that particular account. For prepaid customers, they should be able to do this via the operators website i.e. vodacom4me etc.
 
im sure the cellular networks make money off the wasps, hence the reluctance to go hard on them. sounds similar to their reluctance to blacklist stolen cellphones, coz the thief still needs 2 purchase airtime, and they in the business of selling airtime, not phones... as usual, its the guy in the street that gets screwed :mad:
 
cbrunsdonza said:
Article is misleading and inaccurate. Vodacom have a very strict criteria on who may do OBS billing through them - it requires testing and an OK from Vodacom.

2nd MTN requires a second opt in message and CellC has limited its billing platform to a very select few.

3rd The opt out message may not cost more than R1.00
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These might be the rules but they do not seem to be applied.

My experience was that my MTN number was charged R7 a week for about 4 months. On querying this with them I was told it must be correct and referred to Cointel a Vodacom company. The same attitude applied at Cointel who emailed me a telephone number of "Lucky Mobile" after I threatened them with a fraud case.

The "Lucky Mobile" staff were the first to attempt to solve the problem and after concluding that the subscription was a "technical glitch" refunded me the amounts withdrawn from my account plus a bit extra for the trouble I had incurred in sorting it out

At no stage were any opt in or subscription reminder notices received
 
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Shows you they know they are in the wrong if they jump at the word fraud or criminal case.
 
Vodacom, mTN, CellC don't mind all these rogue operators because they're pocketing around 30% of the VAS rate.

These value added sms services really irritate me. I can deal with R50 or R100 being taken off my phone, but what about poor people who don't even know what these things are, let alone how to unsubscribe.

My number recently got subscribed to a bs sms service at R4.99 per message per day. Apparently one of my nephews was playing on facebook, clicked on the link and signed up. He completed the sign-up thinking it was free and deleted the confirmation message. So I start receiving some generic random bs messages everyday. Didn't pay attention for the first couple of days, but then checked up on it. The only way I could find out where these messages were coming from was by calling Vodacom Customer Services. They gave me a number to call to cancel. I did that, held on for 5 minutes before they answered then ranted and told them to cancel.

What really irritates me is that in the daily message, there's no contact details, no opt-out sms number or anything. An average person would not know what's going on. So that poor sod who earns R500 bucks per month and loads on R100 airtime loses 20% of his income to these thieves.

All these mobile operators are THIEVES, and the Networks (Vodacom, MTN and Cell C) are accomplices.
 
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aadil said:
What really irritates me is that in the daily message, there's no contact details, no opt-out sms number or anything.
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Worth remembering: For almost all SMS subscription services, you can unsubscribe simply by replying "STOP" to any message you receive.
 
Ant_Brooks said:
Worth remembering: For almost all SMS subscription services, you can unsubscribe simply by replying "STOP" to any message you receive.
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Tried that, it didn't work. Apparently with this company (Integrat), you have to call them or send the 'stop' to a 5 digit code (which I didn't have)
 
According to an industry source the first article which prompted this investigation by Vodacom also resulted in the cellular provider issuing a warning to all WASPs, threatening to revoke their WASP licenses if the WASPA Code of Conduct is not adhered to.
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Congrats on both articles, now this is my kind of journalism!!!

RPM, very nicely done :D
 
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