Warning! There is a website which allows you to send a “free” text from the internet.
What it doesn’t mention is that the recipient is charged £5.

Update: This is referred to over at SMS Text News
Update2: 12th Aug 2006: According to Technokitten, Vodafone have blocked the service. Hurrah!

Here is what the sender sees, tucked away at the bottom of the website: Standard text messages are free, other messages the recipient would be charged 500p. What do you understand by a “standard text message” and an “other message”? I asked Fiach Reid from sms-txt to define this a little more clearly. Here’s his reply:

As regards the £5 charge mentioned on the footer on the website - when a person sends a message through our website, the recipient has the choice either to read it via our website, or directly on their phone. Most people opt to read it through the website, since the charge to read it is only 50p, however, to read it via their phone, it costs a premium of £5. Very few people actually opt to pay £5 to read a message, as you can imagine, unless it’s life-or-death :)… However, it’s ICSTIS regulations to list this price on the website.

I think if I started sending SMS to my friends that cost them either 50p or £5 to receive, I’d soon have no friends!

So, what about that claim that Very few people actually opt to pay £5? If you were going to read it on the web (only 50p), then why not send a text message?
I noted that every time I pressed refresh, someone elses address book and number was coming up:

Click Refresh again and a whole new address book appears!

Note in the bottom left status, you can see the end of the recipients number (not enough space to show it here)

I called a total of 4 of these - one sender and three recipients. NONE of them realised the £5 charge, ALL had got stung by it. When I asked the recipients to check their balance, they were shocked. I asked one of them to read the message that they got:

sdfds has sent you a text, send ‘READ 17992′ to 60999 to receive this message,or visit www.sms-txt.co.uk?17992, cost 500p non subscription

Here’s how the call went:

“…and did you realise that the message cost you
£5 to receive?”
Sara: “No ….ing way - is this a wind up?”
Me: “No, can you read the full message to me?”
Sara: “….cost 500p non subscription. Shit. How much is - that’s like £5 or something. Have they charged me that?”
Me: “Can you check your balance?”
They have to hang up, I call back a minute later
Sara: “They took it. I’m well pissed off about that. I’m going to kill my boyfriend!“

Other people didn’t equate 500p with being £5.

They were even more pleased to find that their name and number were plastered over the internet(!)

From the number the people I spoke to gave me, these numbers are sequential,
so if someone with a nicked mobile or paypal account was so minded, he could ‘READ 17992′, ‘READ 17993′, ‘READ 17994′, ‘READ 17995′ etc and therefore read personal texts. But of far greater concern is that anyone can see a name and number of a sender, and a recipient, and call someone. They could pretend that their friend was injured and that they had to meet them their quickly.
“Hi, Shelly?”
“Yes”?
“Your friend Tom has been injured - I found your number in his phone. Do you want a lift to the hospital? Where can I pick you up from?”

ICSTIS (0800 500212) just didn’t get my point that, to me at least, a standard text message would be, to most people’s minds, not an “other” message.
They said this wording was fine! Is it just me???

* Would a 12 year old getting a message “mum has sent you a text, send ‘READ 17992′ to 60999 to receive this message” REALLY bother to scroll down, and then understand that 500p was £5?

ICSTIS said the warning was there, and that it says “Users must be 16+”.
However, this is users of the SITE. It DOESN’T say “the recipient must be 16+”
Therefore, this condition was fine by them too.

* As far as other people’s names and numbers appearing randomly…

Again, this didn’t seem to bother ICSTIS. “Probably just an error on the internet or something”. On this point, I suppose site privacy isn’t their problem or area.

But really…if ICSTIS aren’t there for this kind of thing, then what ARE
they doing???
At least a few more people have the number 0800 500212 to complain to!

The best part is that once you’ve set your friend up for a £5 bill, you get invited to paypal them another 50p!
(click the image)

If you look on my sms page, you’ll see you can send texts for anything from free to 6p worldwide.

There’s more! They have a desktop app which totally fails to mention the charges to the end user. It also totally fails to install or work on my PC!


You can review, rate and let your feelings be known, at
download.com, surfpack, bluchillies, freewarefiles, scripts.com, qarchive, All The Scripts

If you were wondering what the payout is, well, this outfit works via http://www.m-bill.net/uk.htm which leads to
http://www.yourmobilebusiness.com/payout.php - he gets £3 per message you send! A tidy payout, eh?

Update: I’ve read the rules of his provider, which says:
“J. Billing users then not making sufficient efforts to inform customers about the billing model.”
This does seem to conflict with his “standard text messages are free” note in the footer.

So, what else about this site? Those who know about SOAP might want to look at this…

And google might want to look at this, one of thousands of redirect doorways which are banned and will get you removed from Google.

Here are some of the happy campers who paid £5 for the priviledge of having their name and number on the internet….

SENDER 079842XXX73
SENDER 077380XXX69
SENDER 079311XXX11
SENDER 079494XXX07
SENDER 078917XXX31
SENDER 048693XXX16
SENDER 079045XXX09
SENDER 048513XXX49
SENDER 078439XXX59
SENDER 078439XXX59
ANDY 077489XXX11
DEAN 078864XXX98
BOB 078864XXX98
brendan 079311XXX11
J 079582XXX73
kelly 079407XXX13
Ross 079692XXX37
maz 079284XXX83
mezus 079226XXX22
matty 079556XXX87
jasmin 078940XXX23
me 078379XXX64
toni 079441XXX52
TIM 077225XXX90
colleen 079009XXX12
me 079401XXX84
Milly 078559XXX05
darren 020719XXX25
work 020719XXX28
darren 020719XXX25
Pailnka 078007XXX20
Paulnka3 079325XXX41
debil 078715XXX20
debil 078439XXX58


Categories: Uncategorized