I’m ashamed to say, I was scammed by a ringtone company called get-tone.com – http://www.get-tone.com/
I really should have known better but this is what happened. I got a text last week that said, ‘Free Rihanna Shut Up and Drive Ringtone’ and you can click to download it, so, stupidly you might say, I downloaded it. I knew, by downloading the ringtone, I would probably end up getting some annoying text messages encouraging me to download more shite but, in a moment of weakness, I just decided to download it. I clicked on the download button and a wee downloading bar appeared on my phone for about 4 seconds then my phone made a wee sound signifying the ringtone had downloaded and that was that.
So, just over a week later I get a text message saying ‘thank you for signing up to ring-tone.com’ and that it was ‘£4.50 per week’ with the option to unsubscribe. I checked my balance and they had taken £4.50 out of my account. I was absolutely raging as I hadn’t authorised any payment to come out my account or subsribed to anything. So, I phoned up to complain. To cut a long story short, I told them that I didn’t authorise a payment to come out my account, it was theft, give me my money back. The guy on the phone said he couldn’t refund my money as I had downloaded the ringtone but he would unsubscribe me. I said, no the ringtone was free, give me my money back. He said it clearly states in the Terms & Conditions on the site that after 1 week, if you dont unsubsribe you will be charged for the ringtone. I said the Terms & Conditions were not shown when I dowloaded the ringtone and that it’s deliberately deceptive to trick people into signing up. This went on for about 20 minutes with me getting angrier and angrier and him refusing to give me a refund. Any reputable company would have given me a refund straight away. Eventually though, after I refused to go off the phone, he gave me a refund.
So what these companies do is get you to download the ringtone, sign you up automatically, take £4.50 out your account after one week (probably fully expecting you to unsubsribe once you realise you have been charged) but they have your initial £4.50 and won’t refund it to you. If this happens to hundreds or thousands of people on a weekly basis, that’s a lot of £4.50’s.
So, if this happens to you, dont download the bloody ringtone like I did and, if you have downloaded it and you are reading this, phone up and complain and stand your ground until you get your money back! Then report the company who scammed you.
Interestingly, I noticed the company are based in 111 West George Street, Glasgow. Hmmm…
Read what BBC news has to say about text message scams
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4208873.stm
If you are scammed, complain to these people
http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk
Update
I eventually had to change my phone number as the bas****s kept taking my money even after insisting they had removed my number from their database several times. I believe this is theft but it seems they are getting away with it.
