Stopping premium text 88222

[GD1]

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@GRANDMA+JUNE wrote:

I want to know how all of us with sky Mobiles have been scammed by this when we have done nothing to activate this - i have been trying to sort this for months and months and have hopefully finally sorted this with a £0 cap on my spending is this a sky mobile scam???

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As per @63johnw  It's not a sky scam but the actions of the user by clicking seemingly innocent links on social medai etc.

[olympus56]

My wife has had £15 taken in 10 separate amounts, this only came to my attention when she was close to hitting the £20 limit I had marked.

I phoned Sky to be told that there was nothing they could do about it and that the only course of action was to remove the limit from the account and or change mobile numbers.

They were not willing to refund me even though I am a supposed 'VIP' member. 

I note from a Google search that the same scam is also happening on O2.

I can not believe that these phone companies are standing by allowing their customers to be robbed without taking any action to block these rogues!

[GRANDMA+JUNE]

absolutely agree - i am in the same position have since complained via phone paid service authority and have had some response but no refunds yet!!

[The+Teacher]

I noticed that I had been charged £15 above the normal bill for premium texts. The number I was being charged for was my own mobile number, very strange. The text number on my bill was 88222 of course.

I never enter competitions and I'm careful not to send any "graphics" in my SMS messages, otherwise they get charged of course. WhatsApp is a much better solution isn't it!

Anyway, I called Sky and they have now credited me with the £15 and put a £0.00 Spending Cap on my phone, perfect! It seems that Tap2Bill Ltd are the culprits.

As others have said, why does OffCom allow these Conmen to flourish, seemingly with absolute impunity?

Oh well, I do hope that you all get a satisfactory resolution to this terrible situation.
Kind regards
Tony

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Moderator note: removed advertisement 

[geoffff]

Seems fair to ask who are the criminals who own 88222 and why is it fraudulent operation still not shut down?

My provider will refund payments, but say they can't block 88222 from taking my money

So 88222 have effectively turned my phone number into a zombie account. If I ever allow any extra spending on any added services, my phone supplier will pay my money straight to these 88222 thieves. 

[Lyz14]

Thank you, this link works to get to the PSA. Unfortunately, the information once I got there is very sparse  - hoping that emailing their customer care team will work, but have also set spend cap at 0

[geoffff]

My SIM provider said they couldn't stop 88222 from stealing money from me. Being legal criminals 88222 won't respond to me & stop taking my money. Rather sweetly my SIM provider sent me £10 to apologise. This, of course, was immediately stolen by 88222. At least the SIM provider earnt their percentage back for processing  the theft.