Phone Bill - Third Party Charges - Check yours

Hi all,

My wife's recent bill from our national Telco (Australia) had over a $100 worth of Third Party purchases racked up. The bill is inclusive of our Net package and I initially thought the young ones had racked up some game purchases on line. Not the case and apologies to the young ones.

What has seemed to have transpired is my wife may have received some SMS messages on her Mobile (she can't confirm this), opened them then deleted them. After this, without permission, the companies operating the SMS commenced to bill our Telco who passed the billing onto us without and warning or notification.

Now normally I would shrug this off and take it as a lesson learnt. I contacted the Telco who told me to ring the companies (international) on their respective (3) 1300 numbers. This we did but were required to hand over all our details and was even directed by one to ring an affiliate company. When I requested a refund thats when the runaround started. Reported back to the Telco who instructed us they would seek further advice and get back in 6 days. They would not refund me. Leastways they put a 'bar' on the numbers.

Well I thought I'd check up and googled "Third Party Puchases/Charges" on a "Crowd Support" forum in aussie. Seems that there are many others in the same boat, some stating they have never opened or replied to such SMS. Perhaps thousands across Australia including elderly and those that cannot afford them.

So I ask that perhaps you all may check your bills and pay particular attention to any Third Party Purchases and Charges. Those companies charge your phone company up to 3 times a week. Makes a monthly bill expensive.

Kindest regards,

Bally

a reply to: bally001

I hate it when companies try to get you to pay money for services you don't want, this sounds like a very annoying scam. Thanks for the heads-up.

a reply to: darkbake

Yeah likewise mate, I'd certainly like to hear from anyone else who has suffered the same problem. There's talk of a class action on the forums against the Telco here in Aussie.

Regards,

Bally

Have you gone the telecommunications ombudsman route?

I don't know the particulars, but it sounds like you might have a case if these international entities were operating in tandem with Telstra.

Often just informing them that you will be taking that kind of action can be enough to wipe

a reply to: BombDefined

Thanks for the advice BD.

Yes I will go down that path if I have no satisfaction by this time next week. Reading other posts to the forums on line, there are a lot of people who have contacted the Ombudsman, ACCC and others without a great deal of success. There are some who have had rebates.

Cheers for the reply,

Bally

Hi all, to those that are interested I finally got a refund of $600 after putting it out there that the Telco shouldn't be charging these expenses. Shut up money ? 2 x cheques at $300 each.

Kind regards,

Bally