Do PhonepayPlus staff need compliance training?

We have been getting a lot of comments and messages that when the public complain about a premium rate directory service they are told by PhonePayPlus advisor’s that there is nothing wrong with the service, or that they believe the service is compliant and nothing they can do, that its fine to have 090 numbers in google adverts, that its not a problem to advertise on job centre keywords and target the vulnerable.

So we thought we would provide some useful advice for PhonePayPlus on how to evaluate a sites compliance and maybe they can run some training sessions for the staff.

CLICK THE IMAGES TO ENLARGE AND VIEW

Exposing the Child Benefit helpline rip off.

Child benefit is a hot topic at the minute with the governments capping on high wage earners and obviously this is going to generate a lot of calls to he Child Benefits helpline. Well one company called PRS Directory Services Ltd seem to want to cash in on this. A search on google like below will reveal their shenanigans

 

which as you can see the top company paying google to be above the child benefits helpline is the web site by PRS Directory Services Ltd which has the follwing web site up http://contactnumberuk.com/Childbenefit/Cb1.html

On investigation these organisations are clearly breaking the PhonePayPlus rules and they can do something about it as they have fined numerous companies for operating these services yet others seem to get away with it. What is even more surprising is that some of our readers have complained but have not received a reply or have been told by your advisor’s at PhonePayPlus that the services are OK.  We have taken these services we are highlighting and compared them to PPP guidelines and  rules and also past adjudications and it is clear that they are not running within the code of practice.

 When is something going to be done about those that insist on targeting the vulnerable?

Do we really care about child poverty..well fastphonenumbers.co.uk don’t!

Sad fact in people get divorced and facts are a very high percentage of us males are less than shall we say generous when it comes to child maintenance. That is why the Child Support Agency have been in existence for a while now..to make those less willing to errr…cough up. We have been campaigning for a while now to stop companies profits from these types of calls with their so called “directory services”.

Well it seems like google / PPP have taken action and put a stop to the advertising for search like child support agency, csa phone number and the majority of these “directory services” have ceased to take advantage of those struggling single mothers or penniless fathers at least attempting to settle their obligations. The last thing they need is being ripped off calling an expensive premium rate phone line to be told they have to call their local agency.

So its pleasing to see our work is finally starting to yield results and a search on google now for csa phone number etc looks very clean on the cockroach front….well we were pleased until we searched Yahoo. It seems those service providers with less morals have found a way to flout this and are clearly still profit from others miserable situation and suffering. Well we say to Psychic Media Ltd (owners of fastphonenumbers.co.uk ) and Square1 Communications Limited the telco also profiting from this and continuing to do so …shame on you.

If we did a little more research you will find The Register have already run a story about fastphonenumbers.co.uk and  Square1 Communications Limited along with another company called RedPlay Media Ltd who it seems have been fined £50,000 in November 2012 by PPP the regulator and made to be compliant (the rules or guidelines as they like to call them were released early in the year for all operators of this service)

The Guardian also ran a feature on fastphonenumbers.co.uk outfit back in March and here is the link about the NHS phone scam they ran and also child benefit which they also continue to advertise on. We have some questions for http://www.phonepayplus.org.uk/ and well let you know how they respond.

You will see below the screen shot of our Yahoo search and the advert quite clearly prominent at the top of the search results. You will also see quite clearly the page on fastphonenumbers.co.uk promoting their Child support helpline on a premium rate number.

or you could even try MSN….

and then you can click through and find yourself here

or maybe you’d like to be really double unlucky that day and go and renew your child tax credits to top up your child maintenance that has just costs you £12 for 6 minutes on hold like we did to be told we had to call another number. So this what you get on Bing which is Microsoft search engine and this is what you get.

so we thought we would just keep taking screen shots because we thought  a picture does paint a thousand words…or in this case just one question. Why has this companies activities not been investigated by PhonePayPlus when so many others have already been fined and had the error of their ways corrected? We will let you know if PPP give us our answer!

We found this one for Serious Fraud Office and Trading Stanards quite amusing and ironic but i’m not sure they do? Email them and ask them we have and somebody is investigating. It is shame PhonePayPlus are not investigating the activities of  Psychic Media Ltd (owners of fastphonenumbers.co.uk ) and Square1 Communications Limited.

So lets take a breath for a minute my head is spinning with all these vulnerable people being exploited. What do PhonePayPlus think of advertising on vulnerable brands?

How about pensioners?

No us either…seems fastphonenumbers.co.uk are laughing for the last few years. Well we say its about time they were stopped, and made to take a more ethical approach to their business and we have been asking for an investigation for quite sometime now but nothing seems to happen.

How about EMA..thats Education Maintenance Allowance to you and me pocket money from the goverment for 16-19 year old students. Are they fair game for upto £3 per minute from mobiles (a bargain £1.54 from BT) And you wonder why your kids are always asking for money for mobile credit?

so when you think vulnerable people certain words of advice spring to mind that you want to know they could call and get advice..social services, local councils, citizens advice. Well no because they are even advertising on on citizens advice

How about sick or injured animals…and charity.

How about the unemployed …yeap thats right they are fair game as well according to fastphonenumbers.co.uk and PPP

As the final piece of evidence we having misleading pricing. The About Us page of http://www.fastphonenumbers.co.uk has incorrect pricing information. It states its 1.53 per call when it should state that it is £1.53 per minute.

Phishing for a Lloyds TSB phone scam

We have all become wise to the hundreds of email we will have received wanting us to login to our “online banking” with an email from lloydstsb-banking 2012@gmail.ru  . Well just when you thought you’d seen the last of George Agymangy our friendly Nigerian Bank manager wanting you to confirm your Bank Account and sort code we have a new banking scam on the block.

The PhonePayPlus regulations states

“Services and promotional material must not:

a  mislead, or be likely to mislead in any way…”

Let us take a look at what we have uncovered in our investigation into one company, A2B Telecom Ltd who have already been fined once and asked to seek compliance for any future services. They were fined £25,000  for running such service called www.ukpassportadvice.com.

We really would like to think that these web sites below we found all currently operating by A2B Telecom haven’t been approved by  PhonePayPlus Compliance team.

So i bank with Lloyds TSB and wanted to query why id been charged £300 for a failed direct debit, and was preparing to let rip about unfair banked charges when i googled the number for Lloyds TSB and the first thing that struck me is this

So you click through to the site ….www.lloydstsb-help.co.uk (yes i know ..this one is blatant i did say)

So their you have it i called the number (and you wonder why i have such a high over draft and bounce direct debits) and it does seem to be connecting to Lloyds TSB actual DDI number for phone banking so they are not after scamming my bank details they are after scamming my phone bill instead. We contacted Lloyds TSB fraud line and as of yet have not had a response.

If we look at the outfit behind the scam it seems be one with a bit of a track record for these scams. A2B Telecom Ltd got fined for running a similar service on passport office.

Formal reprimand and a bar on the service, or any other service offering advice on UK passports, until the PhonepayPlus compliance team is satisfied that the service is compliant with the Code £25,000 fine

Oh and they are also running www.vodaphone-help.co.uk ….PPP dont seem to want to do anything about this in any sort of timely fashion. Well let you know when they do respond..but lets not hold our breath.

Need to contact HMRC then just make sure you get the right web site and use www.hmrc-help.co.uk because A2B telecom are after your £1.54 per minute

how about www.enviromental-agency.org.uk

They are on a roll now London Congestion Charge  with http://paycongestion.co.uk/

How about the DVLA with this one  www.dvla-help.co.uk

Or how about the European Health Card from the NHS http://european-ehic.org.uk/contact.html

Premium rate scam using google maps

A manipulated Google map with premium number

As you can see from the map on the left the owners of UK-phone.com Oyster Solutions Ltd have found a very manipulative way to trick people into calling their premium rate number and are using the Google map ‘place label’ on their website and it has been manipulated by them by changing the actual company telephone number to a designated premium rate number, thus misleading consumers into believing that this was the companies number.

Just so you know this is what a Google map should look like when the legitimate number and contact details are displayed. The numbers are intentionally changed to mislead people into calling their directory service for a record message that give you another phone number to call. These can cost from £1.54 from BT lines and upto £3 from mobile phone networks.

A legimate Google Maps with contact information

You would think you could trust Google to supply you with a phone number, however it seems possible to manipulate google maps to show a premium rate number to fool us poor unsuspecting public into calling an 090 numbr that can cost upto 3 pounds a minute (well from mobiles at least) and we are going to investigate one premium rate scammer that is using this to mislead the public and rake in thousands of pounds a day.

So lets imagine one day you set off for work on a cold winter morning get on the motorway and you breakdown. Just what you need !! So you search google like something below

So you click on the first result you see ready to get that nice AA man to come sort you out and you get the following web site. You will notice how the Google map has been made to display the PRS 0913 128 3443 number in the actual google map. Now you may well ask how do they do this and why do Google allow them. Well in all honesty its not Google fault they allow you to insert notes into the map (but i cant imagine they had these scammers in minds when they developed that tool)

Now what about PayPhonePlus the premium rate regulator surely they must have done something about this, well these has been action taken by the regulator in the past against a company and the Tribunal rightly fined them £50,000 for doing so. In the previous ruling on the PPP web site panel said

Adjudication Details
Thursday 8 November 2012 CASE REFERENCE: 10943Level 2 provider:  Red Play Media Limited Type of service: Direct call connection and information service Level 1 provider: N/A Network operator: CFL Communications Limited THIS CASE WAS BROUGHT AGAINST THE LEVEL 2 PROVIDER UNDER PARAGRAPH 4.4 OF THE CODE

ii. The Executive noted that promotions included a Google map showing the address of the company the consumer required followed by a phone number (Appendix C and E). However, instead of showing the actual number for the company or organisation, the map had been manipulated to show the premium rate connection number. In all other respects the map was identical to a genuine Google map, for example it contained Google’s logo. The Executive submitted that consumers were misled, or likely to have been misled, into the belief that the map was a genuine Google map and that the premium rate phone number given was the actual number for the company or organisation detailed. 

So it seems even though these types of tactics are quite clearly against the PPP the premium rate regulators seems to apply this regulations on a very adhoc basis and so next time your looking at a google map and thinking of calling the number you find make sure you look twice as you could be unwittingly calling a premium rate number.

So they also like to target people who shall we say are vulnerable through their language our lack of cultral understanding such as those wishing to contact UK Border Agency. Well their is a Google Map for that….just going to cost you upto £3 per minute to call.

Not quite happy with vulnerable motorists, immigrants or those seeking asylum they are also preying upon the very people we go to for advice, the good old Citizens Advice. Normally a land-line number (starting in 01 or 02) to make an appointment to go see somebody. Not when uk-phone.com its going to cost you more than that to get a useless number that doesn’t offer any advice.