Australia: More Opera Telecom Complaints

[El Gringo]

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sto...000117,00.html
Superhighway robbery
Andrew Bolt
May 07, 2008

I WISH to report a robbery. Last December I started to get messages on my mobile phone - motivational ones of the kind I despise.

I had no idea who was sending them, and no idea who could want them. But there was one other thing of which I had no idea: each one cost me $2.

By chance, my wife noticed this odd $2 item that kept popping up on our Optus bill, 15 times in all.

Not our problem, said Optus, who nevertheless had taken its cut of the $30 I'd so far paid for these Premium Services messages I'd never asked for.

It gave me the number of Opera Telecom, a British "call aggregator" that had used Optus to send me this garbage. Not our problem, said Opera Telecom, which had nevertheless taken its own cut of my $30.

It in turn gave me the number of a Burnitmobile, a Canadian company that had given it these unwanted messages to pass on. And finally I reached the Burnitmobile help line and said I wanted my money back, please. This, to me, was stealing.

The girl on the other end said the company would consider my request, but I had to send all my phone records to prove which calls I'd got.

This, from the buggers who knew exactly how many calls they sent me, having billed me for every unwanted one.

I don't know if I'll get back my money, and I suspect others who've lost similar amounts will figure it's not worth that hassle chasing so little.

They'll write it off, and just block all Premium Service calls, or at least text STOP to them. Indeed, I suspect companies like Burnitmobile rather count on people giving up.

Many readers on my blog site say they've had just this trouble, having been tricked into joining a Premium Service - perhaps during some phone-in competition. How I got dragged in I cannot say, although I've found pests can sign you up through the internet.

Several say they've got Optus and Telstra to repay what they've lost. There's also a Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, but that does little more than count your complaints -- more than 10,000 in just its first six months of taking calls, and rising.

This is robbery, with the sheriff asleep. Sure, many Premium Service outfits - even Burnitmobile, perhaps -- are honest, but if only 100,000 of us are pinged $30 a pop in this electronic wild West, that's a $3 million heist.

Only it's not just $30 - readers tell me they've picked up even spare mobile phones not used in months to find they've been charged $180 or even more for unwanted messages that just built up in their in-box.

A tip for our authorities. Force all such messages be sent with a clear warning of the cost of the call, and have a return-call function to cancel the call and the charge. Make the carriers, big enough to police these things, responsible for repaying consumers who've been burgled by phone.

There. Was that so hard?

Andrew goes 'walk about'
considering Australia's population that puts to shame our '4,500' PhonePayPlus complaints in the first three months of this year