Suspensions for text message abuse - what you need to know

jaymailsays

tuneintestaccount
Yeh, can’t argue with that.

I did say earlier that it’s not the giffgaff way.

Or at least it shouldn’t be.

corin70238

dcameron194 it seems to me that giffgaff are looking after their customers!!!! Why would u allow a 3rd party access to your phone and account w n giffgaff does and gives so much???? Idiots!!! hayba12

timwilliams25

I do not think the option to get a PAC should be allowed, as this will then allow the person to get the money they earned from mofone app, as this is the way you withdraw money.

I would not be happy if it happened to me but would take the medicine. I would after all have given a third party app use of my phone and number and would probably be better off with a new number.

jaymailsays

timwilliams25 I do not think the option to get a PAC should be allowed

It is not in giffgaff"s gift to prevent number porting.

People and businesses have the right, by law, to keep their telephone numbers regardless of who they choose as their phone company. Ofcom’s rules mean all telecoms providers must let customers take their telephonenumber with them when they switch providers. This process is known as ‘number porting’

Taking action

Today, we fined a telecoms provider called Cloud M £50,000 for refusing to let one of its customers – a small business – take their phone number with them when they wanted to switch to another provider.

Telecoms companies must compensate customers if they break our number porting rules. Cloud M did not do this, so in addition to the £50,000 fine we also requiring the company to pay £1,000 to its customer.

Similarly, earlier this year we fined another phone provider called Gateway Telecom £20,000 for flouting our rules, and also told it to pay £1,000 compensation.

These are not large telecoms companies, so these were significant fines. Our message is clear to the whole industry – we won’t tolerate anyone acting outside the law.

But we’re not just waiting for problems to arise before taking action. We have put the telecoms industry on notice, and told them to develop a process to override attempts to unlawfully block or hinder customers from taking their number with them.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/features-and-news/we-fight-for-your-right-to-port-a-number

I would expect a large company such as giffgaff to be fined around £1m based on turnover should they flout Ofcom’s PAC rules and legislation

It does appear that Ofcoms’s PAC rules on text n switch have been broken by giffgaff too.

danwillen

tuneintestaccount Barring members permanently is way too harsh; it should only be reserved for the most unwelcome actions taken, such as illegal activity,

Are you saying FRAUD is not illegal? As that is what these members had been allowing to be done through there number. You have to remember this is not just a breach of the t+c’s this is also fraud.

z201205

danwillen You have to remember this is not just a breach of the t+c’s this is also fraud.

I can see why it’s a breach of terms and conditions but not fraud. Why is it criminal deception?

giffgaff have only themselves to blame as they could prevent a breach of their terms and conditions by simply stopping outgoing texts automatically when they detect a breach. That would be seen as a fairer way of dealing with customers who breached the terms and conditions. They can then be educated to not do it again before restoring service.

tuneintestaccount

danwillen I’m not saying fraud is not illegal; fraud certainly IS illegal. What I didn’t know was that an app automatically sending a few thousand texts per day would count as “fraud”…

sarahcullis1969

Totally new to all this, and may be stupid questions, but what do they do with your unused txts etc?

harrrrrry

sarahcullis1969 what do they do with your unused txts etc?

Unused texts are not physical objects. They can’t be put in a box and kept for later. So, there is nothing that “needs to be done” with your unused texts.

“Unlimited” is purely a notional allowance that means that giffgaff doesn’t have to count them or charge individually for them. There is an assumption made about the average number of texts that a member will use for the intended purpose – which is very strictly for personal, one to one, hand-typed messages. giffgaff calculates the cost of your goodybag based on that average. If that average goes up, then the cost of goodybags has to increase. So, anything (such as one of these apps) that tries to improperly let third parties create bogus traffic must eventually increase the cost of goodybags. And these particular messages aren’t even genuine traffic – their sole purpose is to send bogus messages to the app author’s server, so that the app author’s server can charge giffgaff for “delivering” the bogus messages.

tuneintestaccount

jaymailsays It does appear that Ofcoms’s PAC rules on text n switch have been broken by giffgaff too.

And if what some members have been saying is true also, i.e. once barred you are unable to claim your PAC code to take to another network, then I wouldnt be at all surprised if this doesnt flout Ofcom’s PAC rules as well!

Ofcom need to come down hard on phone companies that refuse to let their customers keep their number and switch networks, regardless of reasoning.

rickvigorous

z201205 giffgaff have only themselves to blame as they could prevent a breach of their terms and conditions

Uh, literally blaming the victim…

z201205

rickvigorous quoted out of context as I said they could prevent abuse by stopping outgoing texts. Their systems obviously spotted abuse but banned customers completely rather than just outgoing texts. Banning outgoing texts only allows continued communication with the customer so that they are aware they have broken terms and conditions and sort the issue out. As giffgaff is online only, it may be the customer’s only way of accessing the internet so once it is cut off they won’t receive emails.

rickvigorous

z201205 giffgaff is online only, it may be the customer’s only way of accessing the internet so once it is cut off they won’t receive emails.

Ok, fair point. But still, I don’t look so kindly on fraud…

danwillen

tuneintestaccount What I didn’t know was that an app automatically sending a few thousand texts per day would count as “fraud”…

Im not saying its the automated sending of texts thats fraud its how these texts are charged to giffgaff by the receiving network thats fraud at least thats what the following statement by a staff member makes it sound like to me

dcameron194 The termination charge of the number ranges being used by MoFoNo are higher than they should be for a normal mobile phone.

So, while we expect a charge of X from the terminating network, which allows us to count this in our unlimited usage heading; we actually receive a charge of Y. Less than a premium rate number, but more than a regular number

That to me reads as the difference in cost between X and Y is been obtained by deceit and obtaining money by deceit is fraud.

jaymailsays

tuneintestaccount
I think giffgaff have confirmed barred members can obtain their pac via agents.

helen87402

dcameron194 I would be too scared to allowed anyone free access to my messages and allow them to send anything, they could literaly land you in jail!

tuneintestaccount

helen87402 Indeed - which is why I don’t install anything that could be seen as suspicious. This includes stuff that seems too good to be true, i.e. MoFoNo app

tuneintestaccount

jaymailsays Good, that sounds like a decent plan then. Members need to be able to get their PAC’s and leave, whether barred or unbarred.

snus1 I thought that you couldn’t rejoin after being barred anyway? That was what someone else informed me earlier on in this thread…

Blocking by bank cards can be bypassed by going to a shop and activating a voucher. So that won’t work, since anyone who has a top up shop (most do it, including our local Co-Op) can easily buy credit via a method that can’t be linked between accounts.
As for postal address, that means that anyone who moved house at any time further down the line, into the house of a barred member, would then have their SIM barred? Again, completely unfeasible, and I reckon that if an innocent member was barred by any network just because of an address change, then the victim in question could seek recourse through the legal departments.

dtuxcomp

jaymailsays That’s correct, the advice we were given when this broke was that any affected member would need to contact an agent to receive their PAC as the normal automated route wouldn’t work on a barred account.

snus1

Very good @dcameron194 , these people should be banned for future as well, giffgaff should use some tactics to prevent them to rejoin by their postal address and bank cards.

midnightgirl17

Yes as this just makes it harder for the ones who are actually participating on here and helping out other members since we don’t have a call centre

z201205

danwillen That to me reads as the difference in cost between X and Y is been obtained by deceit

Why? In another reply, @dcameron194 said that some costs of Y are expected. Clearly the use of the app is breaking the terms and conditions but I don’t see deceit against giffgaff.

rickvigorous

z201205 app is breaking the terms and conditions but I don’t see deceit against giffgaff.

That’s where things like "fair use"come in. If you get ofered complementary sweets, you are expected to take one, not a hanfull or more analogous to this case : you shouldn’t take the from the storage room by the kilogram. Saying "they where free anyway"would not stand in this case..

dtuxcomp

z201205 I understand it’s not easy to define, but it’s clear fraud, if you paid by card in a shop for something then found when you looked at your card statement you’d actually been charged double by the shopkeeper that would be fraud, if the shopkeeper was doing that to a lot of customers they’d wind up in huge trouble. That’s why this was a different case, each automated SMS sent by this app was costing giffgaff money on top of the normal cost of sending one, multiply that by however many were being sent across all the members who had installed this app and that could very quickly either run up the costs to all us members or even cripple the network financially considering the low margins they work on.