-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Simon Bates You & Yours Interview and PhonePayPlus Hypocrisy Over Text Message Scams
Date: Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:32:25 +0000
To: sbates@phonepayplus.org.uk, pwhiteing@phonepayplus.org.uk, agraham@phonepayplus.org.uk, rchilton@phonepayplus.org.uk, bbrady@phonepayplus.org.uk, jeremy.hallsworth@bt.com
CC: youandyours@bbc.co.uk, winifred.robinson@bbc.co.uk, heather.clayton@oft.gov.uk, ali.nikpay@oft.gov.uk, david.saunders@competition-commission.org.uk, rachel.merelie@competition-commission.org.uk, chloe.macewen@competition-commission.org.uk, stuart.mcintosh@ofcom.org.uk, peter.phillips@ofcom.org.uk, anna.bradley@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, Emily.keaney@communicationsconsumerpanel.org.uk, gareth.davies@ofcom.org.uk, clive.hillier@ofcom.org.uk, ed.richards@ofcom.org.uk
Dear PhonePayPlus Directors and Chief Executive,
Simon Bates You & Yours Interview and PhonePayPlus Hypocrisy Over Reverse Billed Text Message and Other PhonePayPlus Enabled ScamsI forward below a copy of the comments I sent to BBC Radio 4's You and Yours program (listen again from minute 1 of the program onwards at
www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00qznd7/You_and_Yours_04_03_2010/). Some of the comments I also contributed to the program by phone were also put to Simon Bates in the form of a question about the theoretical independence of PhonePayPlus being almost entirely compromised by relying on a thriving 09 and text message scam industry in order for the organisation's well paid senior executive staff, such as Simon Bates, to continue holding their jobs.
Perhaps Mr Bates's contentment on the Radio 4 program with these services being in his view a fact of modern life that is not going to go away may have something to do with the six figures + salary and pension package he no doubt draws on the back of his organisation complacently still allowing millions of young, naive and/or impoverished consumers to continue to be ripped off by an entirely unnecessary and entirely non price transparent premium rate phone call and reverse billed text message industry.
Not discussed at all on the You and Yours program (where we heard mainly only of mobile phone customers with itemised bills who had objected to large amounts for reverse billed text messages shown on those bills) is the fact that most of the industry's success is based on PayAsYouGo mobile use where consumers mainly have no idea at all how much these services have cost them because PhonePayPlus's telco profit loving and equally unscrupulous parent (Ofcom) continues to permit all the UK mobile operators to run pay as you go products that withhold all possible forms of call itemisation. By contrast I have full text by text and data block by data block online call credit use itemisation on the two Spanish PayAsYou Go sim cards I hold with
www.simyo.es and
www.pepephone.com There is no possible excuse for this call cost itemisation being withheld online by Uk mobile phone operators (where the cost of its actual provision would be negligible and its only actual real cost is the huge reduction in the number of ripoff calls made by consumers that would then ensue) but of course it continues to occur because of the utterly useless concept of telecoms industry self regulation under Ofcom that has already been so widely derided in the case of the FSA and the financial services industry.
So far as I am concerned anyone who works for PhonePayPlus does not have any genuine interest at all in protecting the consumer and their only actual interest seems to be in drawing as a large a salary and as large a pension as they possibly can. Your equal failure to regulate 0871 numbers on the full premium rate basis originally promised by Ofcom (but then backtracked on using the usual New Labour smoke and mirrors) speaks volumes about your true motivations as an organisation. I note that I provided a long response to that consultation but all of my comments and those of 600+ other plus consumers (see
www.phonepayplus.org.uk/output/Responses-Regulation-of-0871-services.aspx) were completely ignored by your predecessor ICSTIS in favour of your previously agreed plans with Ofcom.
Yours in concern,
Regards,