| Mobile content consists of ring tones, logos, pictures, wallpapers
and other content offered on web sites for download. Just surf the web and you will find many web sites offering
services – some topic specific, other country specific. Frequenting forums recently, I found
disgruntled clients in South Africa that wanted to download mobile content, but the ring tone or logo failed to download. As a result the “networks" and Mobile phone companies are blamed for this failure of
delivery.
The actual post I refer to started
off with a warning about a scam where people received “Please call me" SMS. In
response to the “please call me", the customer was kept online having to answer
senseless surveys with the call charges running up on their phone bills. The South African networks issued a warning
against this scam that was doing the rounds.
Reading the posts I was quite
astounded with the level of ignorance from the public side. Immediately legitimate SMS competitions
(premium rated SMS) were drawn into the conversation with clear customer
dissatisfaction being expressed. The
following accusations were made in the particular post:
1.
Networks
were blamed for delivering the 072 “Please call me" SMS and supporting such
practice.
2.
Companies
offering SMS competitions were blamed of not stating the cost per SMS clearly.
3.
Mobile content companies were blamed for
false advertising and clear anger was evident where customers submitted and
paid for a download, but did not receive it.
Let’s take a look at this situation:
1.
Networks being
blamed for delivering “please call me" SMS:
For those that are not
familiar with the "Please call me SMS" system here is a simple explanation. The system works on the old land line “collect call" basis where the mobile phone
user send a SMS to someone they know to phone them. The person responding to the
“Please call me" returns the call and foots the bill for the call.
I think the initial intention
for the service was to render assistance to people that could not afford the
call or run into trouble without prepaid airtime to phone for help in a crises
situation. It was not long, however before
the opportunity was grabbed by abusers of the system.
What the scammers do, is to send out “Please call me" SMS to
random mobile phone numbers. The
recipient unknowingly returns the call as they do think that it is from someone
they know and requires assistance. The
bad thing about the “Please call me" SMS is that the recipient has no way of
knowing who sent the SMS as it does not support sender ID.
Upon answering the call, it
turns out to be a call center doing a survey.
The caller is kept online for as long as possible as each minute is
charged to his/her phone bill at ridiculous rates – as much as ZAR 50-00 per
minute. 10 Minutes online, results in
ZAR 500-00 mobile phone bill of which the scammer in question get revenue share
from the networks.
Issues at stake that we should question:
SHOULD THE NETWORKS BE BLAMED
FOR THIS PRACTISE?
1.
Working
with the networks myself, I find it hard to believe that they will support such
practice. Normally with any promotion
the client has to state the nature of the promotion, as the Networks have to
check whether or not the promotion is anti-sp@m policy compliant. Should the networks not investigate
complaints like these and send out a Press release stating their position
towards these sort of scams? Where are
the network public relations officers?
2.
Isn’t
it the mobile phone user’s responsibility to NOT return any suspicious calls or
SMS they
receive?
Where does supplier responsibility end and
customer responsibility start?
We took a look at the various topics mentioned in this article as a three part series about mobile scams:
1. Mobile scams
2. Premium rated SMS
3. Mobile content
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