The other day, I received the cheque that was promised, and it has now been put into my bank account.

The letter had a Canadian franked postmark on it.

Also the letter again said "Thankyou for using PC Modding services, we're sorry you didn't find our program useful"

It has now costed them between 10-20 times the amount that they made in profit from the text (taking account of the fact that not all £1.50 goes to them, and the cost of admin, and posting of 2 cheques)

This means they need at least 20 people who don't complain about these texts for them to make a profit, so if more people took a stand to companies such as zim, then maybe they wouldn't send out so many unsolicited texts.

Vodafone and Zim have already agreed that the only way I could have received the text, is to send a text in the first place to agree that I would receive a reverse charge text.  I never sent any such text, so how I could have been sent such a text in the first place, can only be down to incompetence, or scamming, but either way, they haven't dared sending any more!!

Good for you getting the refund, despite promises from O2 after much emailing and calling, no refund has ever appeared for me and now they deny the emails they sent me. They say that the person dealing has left the company and that is an end to the matter. Standard email in fact, as the same spelling mistakes appeared again. I am afraid it is another 0870 type scam, not many people are going to take it via the small claims, not for say £10.

I maintain a pre-pay (PAYG) cellular phone with Orange, mainly for use when I visit my home country to avoid high roaming charges. To keep the service active, I usually send myself an SMS message every five or six months. On Sunday it was time to do this. As soon as I switched on the handset, a spam SMS was visible from 84010 which consequently reduced my balance to almost zero. Complaining to Orange was a waste of time, however I had to suspend my service to prevent any more of this garbage. I explained that I could not actually originate a short-code, even if I wanted to, as the US network would intercept it as an invalid code, however Orange could not accept this technical issue. It suggested I call ICSTIS which I duly did on Monday morning. A waste of time - it was suggested I contact the company, Dialogue, which as we know, uses 0871 and 0870 numbers. I sent off a web email but, as expected no response. A further call to ICSTIS on Tuesday, same result. This time, suggested I contact B4U, andother 0871 user. Again, a web mail request met with nil response. A call to Ofcom proved useless as it is not concerned about these scams. My next thought was to report this as fraud and theft to West Midlands police. I submitted a complaint, also mentioning the problem with their use of 0845 numbers which meant I could not call them. Today I receive the following response which effectively states that I have to pursue this with the FBI:

<<
Thank you for contacting West Midlands Police.

I read with interest your email and would like to progress your enquiry as quickly as possible.

Unfortunately, International protocol dictates that we cannot communicate directly with you.

The correct procedure will be for you to report the matter to your local law enforcement department. They in turn should then pass it through the appropriate channels to the FBI who will consider the most appropriate course of action.

I am sorry that this might not be what you anticipated. There are stringent guidelines and we can only operate within the procedures agreed.

Regards

Economic Crime Unit,
Viceroy House.
>>

So, I am 1.50 GBP out of pocket, stolen by a scammer yet I have seemingly no recourse.

The whole telephone regulation in the UK is a merry-go-round of mediocrity, lethargy, dithering and complicity in fraud. I'm in two minds as to whether to pursue this with the feds or to filter it through my MP back home. What an absolute joke. ICSTIS wouldn't recognize their ar5e from their elbow and couldn't see a fraud if presented with a three-pound note. The call center staff seem to have an aggregate of half-a-brain. The word 'independent' needs to be dropped from their title - they are as bad, if not worse, than the fraudsters committing these criminal offences.

Does anyone with appropriate knowledge know whether the assertion by West Mids police is in fact correct and that they cannot entertain a crime report from a resident of another country? Sounds a bit bonkers to me.

Incidentally West Mids conveniently overlooked my complaint about their use of 0845.

bbb_uk wrote on Apr 8^th, 2006 at 12:11pm:

I know it has been mentioned that as it is your provider that bills you, then the contract is between you and them and not the telco provider of the scamming company. Thus, it is surely your provider's responsibility to be able to proove that you did indeed sign up for such a service.

I find it appalling there is no system in place for the mobile networks to reject such messages if the subscriber doesn't wish to recieve them. Sending such messages out gives scammers carte blanche to dip into people's account, quite often unnoticed.

Thanks for the feedback, this is building up an interesting case, not directly 08xx related.

A postscript to this is in speaking to ICSTIS this morning, I gave them the geo number for Dialogue and they claimed that the 0871 number was National Rate, the lady I spoke to had no idea of the charging rate for 0871.

I do not honestly hold out much hope of OFCOM sorting out this 08xx mess, it seems they are just making a complicated situation worse. They should simply go back 15 years and accept they didnt police the numbering properly, let the telecoms companies keep all the huge amounts they have made over that period and now put it back to how it should have been.

Oh I wish . . .