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The perils of premium SMS

By Damian Clarkson, ITWeb junior journalist
Johannesburg, 24 Feb 2005

Cellphone users must be alert to the threat posed by unscrupulous mobile service providers in the local market, says Exactmobile.

While services that offer downloadable content and reverse billing - billing a cellphone user to receive a message rather than send one - are designed to increase the functionality of SMS, it can also mean users are unwittingly paying for SMSes, or for nothing at all, says Exactmobile CEO Davin Mole.

These costs could be substantial, as premium SMSes can cost anywhere up to R30 each.

"Reverse billing first arrived in SA about a year ago, but at present only about five companies can do it, as it is fairly complex," Mole says.

There have been reports in England of companies fooling users into signing up for hidden subscription services and Mole believes this is almost certainly happening locally as well.

"The 'dodgy` services will give the impression that you are simply buying one item at a time, when in fact you will be added to a subscription service.

"These services get away with it because they then include in the small print something like 'To unsubscribe to the service...` where very often the number that you need to send to is not the same as the number where you requested the original item. Unless you retained the original advert, things can go very wrong," says Mole.

Long and winding trail

The problem is worsened by the fact that some content sellers use another company to do the billing, meaning the trail of accountability gets messy very quickly.

Many services also do not offer sufficient front-line support, so finding out whom to contact to stop such a service can prove difficult. Mole believes the correct way to handle subscriptions is to ensure there is a different process to subscribing compared to simply downloading one item at a time. It is also important to ensure the service is advertised clearly as a subscription with repeat billing.

"Some companies have made some easy money, but have done substantial damage to the credibility of the mobile service industry along the way, which is a shame as there are companies working hard at creating a sustainable industry," says Mole.

"In order to counter this problem, the words 'do you want to subscribe` should be made very clear in the SMS, as well as the price and timing of the follow-up messages."

Paying for nothing

While reverse billing can leave users vulnerable to disreputable companies, Mole says there are various reputable mobile service providers where consumers can actually end up paying for nothing.

"It is very common in SA for companies to take a superficial approach to actually ensuring items get delivered. Most companies are so busy trying to get people to send in content requests that they spend little or no real resources on support."

The result is that users who attempt to download content to their phones are guaranteed to be charged, but do not receive anything in return.

"Exactmobile has spent a huge amount of time and resources on CRM [customer relationship management] and internal tracking systems, and despite this we still occasionally 'drop the ball`. So I would seriously caution a user from using a service they do not know and trust from prior experience."

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Users suspicious of mobile apps
Phone spam plague spreading
Phone giants preparing 'Super 3G`

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