mobidol charges

A question about : mobidol charges

Hi, my son (2yr) got hold of my phone when I wasnt looking and clicked an app and subsequently an advert that took him to the mobidol website where with one click and no real security or confirmation measures signed me up to a service I dont want that is costing me Ј4.50 a week, I have immediately unsubscribed but I dont want to be charged for this service. Can I get my money back, surely this cant be a fair and legal method of charging people, simply clicking on their website?

Best answers:

• Hello
  Please find below some information from Mobidol Customer care. They are there in order to help you, contact them: on the email provided in the text message reply.
  The text message (SMS) that you have received are not premium SMS. They are just either welcome or reminder SMS.
  The charges for our products are not collected by text messages but by Payforit system.
  The Mobidol store provides the best selection of games, applications, videos, music, and ringtones for your smartphone and gives you the possibility of legal downloads for Ј4.50 per week. You can get more information about the products from their website
  In order to subscribe to their service, you have to:
  1.Visit our mobile site or see and click one of our mobile advertisements.
  2. Afterwards, you are sent to one of our Mobidol product pages displaying the name of the service and its price. At that point, you are required to click again in order to subscribe.
  3.Following that step, you will be directed to our Payforit billing page, where a final click is required to conclude the sale.
  4. You then reveive a text message (SMS) confirming your subscription : i.e. example below welcome SMS with unsubscription process
  FreeMsg: Thank you for subscribing to Mobidol for Ј4.50 per week from Mobidol until you text STOP to 64546. HELP? 03308080141
  and thereafter, you receive a monthly text message reminder, i.e. reminding you that you have subscribed and giving you again the unsubscription process
  Payforit is a service designed to make it easy to pay for services via mobile phone and it is supported by all licensed UK mobile operators. Once you have authorized the payment by pressing ‘Subscribe’, a payment request goes directly to your mobile operator for validation.
  There is no means of subscribing to our service without these 3 positive actions being conducted on a mobile handset.
  I am sure if you call them on the number provided or via the email they will be able to assist you if it was an accidental purchase to your son - These things do sometimes happen when kids get hold of adult mobile handsets but they would have pressed the right buttons to get there!
  Hope this helps!
• Just had this happen on my DH's phone bill. The purchase was made at a time our DD was in school so it would have been my DH and no one else. Payforit refused to refund as it was some kind of video my DH has allegedly downloaded. They said it was a legitimate website and legitimate purchase Thankfully it was a one-off payment. Unfortunately we had to pay it and will be a lesson learnt for my DH. If an adult can accidentally click on something like this, there is less chance for a kid, let alone a toddler to be wary of this.
  Anyway Payforit said it will block all downloads from this website for my DH's number and in the same call I made sure Three (our network provider) will block any "out of bundle" payments.
• The same thing happened to my son who is 12 and has got his first mobile phone. He didn't realise anything about the text received from mobidol so didn't tell me, I don't look at the bills as they get debited from my bank account. I happened to be looking at my account a few weeks back and noticed 2 lots of Ј4.50. I rang vodaphone who told me it was mobidol and to text a number to unsubscribe. I did this but got and undelivered reply. So I emailed mobidol but have had no response to date. I Thought as I had emailed them the subscription would stop and that would be the end of it but no. I looked at my account last week and had 3 more payments go through. So texted to stop but this week another payment has been deducted. So even by sending the stop text the payments are still being debited. Tonight I rang vodaphone and changed my sons number so no more payments can go through. With all the security around purchases these days I find it unbelievable that innocently someone (mainly a child), can do a few clicks and then be charged. In my email to mobidol I asked what app/game it was but have no idea as they haven't replied. Not too happy at all. But lesson learned. So many young children have phones and there should be more security around this kind of thing happening.
• I got the same text message today - I'm guessing it is a result of my 3 year old son messing around on my phone. I've done my best to avoid things like this by setting a password so he cannot download non-free apps or make in-app purchases. However, this doesn't seem to protect me from this sort of agreement. It won't surprise you to know he cannot read and so any facility where you can incur charges from three taps of the screen without having to input some sort of written confirmation/acceptance is bound to inadvertently sign up some users in this way who do not wish to subscribe. A quick Google search confirms this hypothesis.
  I have emailed Mobidol today (same day as receiving the message) to confirm I have no wish to subscribe to their services, nor have I used any of them. Does anyone know if this will be in time to opt out of the first Ј4.50 payment? Their terms and conditions say there is a 14 day withdrawal period.
  Thanks.
• PIN-lock and SIM-lock your phone?
  I do that anyway, even without a three year old around.
• I'm going to sound rather feeble - but what's a SIM-lock? I have a lock on the phone so that you need to swipe a certain pattern to use it. But you underestimate 3 year olds if you think he can't get past that!
  Even if I changed the pattern on a regular basis so that he doesn't know what it is, it wouldn't get round the fact that he could sign me up for something while he is using it legitimately to play games on. The only way I can think that these companies could avoid signing up customers by mistake is some sort of requirement to enter a credit card number, or to confirm your phone number. Or maybe this SIM-lock is the answer to my prayers!
  Getting back on topic, I rang Mobidol this morning who confirmed that I will have already incurred the first Ј4.50 charge but that they can refund me by cheque. Sorted.