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same happened to my daughter. got a new toccolite phone and played with the free games. then charged 10p for a text and £4.50. Have sent in the refund form and a copy of my bill - will await a reply

As I said some strong emails to mbiz samsung got a full refund, have deleted the games on phone. Surely this isn't enough anyone willing to go to BBC Watchdog?
Must be 10's of 1000's of us out there.

same thing has happened to my daughter, when we purchased a tocco lite she received two texts costing £8.00 within 24 hours of activating the sim.
The problem is not the service provider but it is samsung, they put these damn games on the phone so they must know what is going on!
Has anyone contacted thr actual phone companies to complain - I have just emailed samsung.

I have also fallen foul to this scam. As I remember after trying the ‘trial game’ the only option given is to request an unlock code. I must have pressed the request code button accidentally but then closed the game upon realising my mistake. At the very least the game should give you the option to close or proceed and then make it very clear to the customer that if they proceed they will be charged a specific price. In my opinion this is a complete scam by MBIZ which is facilitated by Samsung and the service providers. I have written a letter of complaint to my service provider, Samsung and MBIZ. Will also contact watchdog

was sent message that they had taken £4-50 out of my phone.when i didn't even send or download a new game,just because i tried games.Think it time the police was informed so they can sort it out,the phone was bought from carphone warehouse and was a samsung.stinks

Yep same thing happened to me, charged £3 without realizing or getting confirmation that I was ordering some (in my opinion) 'very poor quality game' I shall contact 02 tomorrow and if they cannot stop the charge at the end of the month, then they have lost my custom whether its their fault or not, maybe the telephone companies will avoid getting involved with MBIZ, if you or I done business like this we would probably end up in prison!!!! Actually I was thinking of stopping my bank from even giving 02 any more money!! This way the ball is 'firmly in their court' they can then chase me for the £3. Now that sounds like a plan to me........

My daughter was charged for sending 3 texts and receiving 3 at a total cost of over £13 while playing the trial game and said she received the same code 3 times.Have submitted a refund form to MBIZ advising that if a refund is not forthcoming will be passing the matter to Trading Standards and Watchdog so wiill see what happens.

UPDATE - I HAVE REPORTED MBIZ TO phonepayplus.org.uk. THEY ARE NOW IN THE PROGRESS OF A FORMAL INVESTIGATION, I SUGGESTED YOU DO THE SAME IN SUPPORT AND TO STOP MBIZ. I DID FILL IN THE REFUND FORM FROM MBIZ AND SENT THE PROOF BUT THEY STILL DID NOT REFUND MY MONEY. I EMAILED SAMSUNG SEVERAL TIMES AND THEY ENDED UP RINGING ME AND TELLING ME THAT IT IS NOTHING TO DO WITH THEM, THEY HAD SPOKE WITH THEIR SOFTWARE DEPT AND ALL THE PRELOADED GAMES ON SAMSUNG TOCCO LITE PHONES ARE FREE!! DISGUSTED WITH THEIR LACK OF INTEREST IN THEIR CUSTOMERS AFTER PURCHASING THEIR PRODUCT.

Don't let them do it!! Our daughter has been a victim of this shameful scam as well. She just opened the trial game on her Samsung phone and the phone then seems to have contacted Samsung who have then sent her the £4.50 text. She also had associated costs with the sending of the text message. How can Samsung be allowed to do this and how can Virgin allow them to bill for it?

I emailed samsung about my daughter's tocco lite and the charges incurred for games and their response was 'this is standard practice in the industry' and as far as they were concerned it was not their problem.
I for one will not be purchasing samsung phones again, we currently have 4 in our family.

The same thing happened to my Son with his Tocco Lite.

I saw this because is phone is billed on my contract. On PAYG it must be hard to see where the credit has gone?

I've complained to PhonepayPlus, and sent an Email to Samsung. See below.

>I purchased the above phone for my son. Without realising it he has been charged £4.60 for a game he has played.

I see many others are complaining about this in online forums.

Just to let you know that I think you should be ashamed of being involved in such underhand, sharp practices. These services are targeted at Children, most who are on PAYG, so no paper trail is easily found.

My sons' phone is on my Orange contract, so I can see what he's been charged for.

Samsung have very much gone down in my estimation due to this incident.

I will go out of my way in the future to avoid buying any of your products. I will also advise as many other people as possible, in my job as a Computer Engineer, to do the same.<

I have recently found out that my cellphone has been subsribed to MBIZ-support.com and i have no idea as to how it happened. everytym wen i regharge my airtime just dissapears until i called mtn who advised me of MBIZ.can u please advise me as to what i can do to stop this?

I have finally written to BBC Watchdog asking them to look at this.
Hopefully they will.
Bot my money back hope you are all successful too.

Steve

I have JUST been done by this scamming company.   they said i've purchased a game for £4.50, and they've given me a activation code, im  not gonna click on it, god knows how much taht would cost, im sick of this happening, can orange refund my credit?  is there any way of me stopping these texts?!

I lost my phone the other day and after some research, i've found out that some [***] been using it for the last 3 days texting this number, when i find them, after stalking the numbers that they've called I will go ape [***]!

Same thing happened to me...my 11 year old daughter was scammed out of £4.50 by no. 82018.  After reading so many similar stories on here, I contacted the ombudsman PhonePayPlus (free) on 0800 500212.  They gave me the number for Sybase365 - 0845 600 6105 (charged at local rate).  They said they would contact MBiz (the culprit) and have my daughter's number removed from their system.  When I asked what happens about my £4.50, they said MBiz would be contacting me within the next week.  Will wait and see what happens...

I have a Samsung Jet on Virgin and have also been charged!
How much money is this company making out of it us all?!!
There is clearly point in asking for a refund either.

Oh know yet another one caught by this SCAM 82018. My Sons just been had with this one with his new Samsung Genio and a free trial driving game, he's dyslexic and didn't have a clue what was going on when he got the texts to his surprise.

Got onto the MBIZ refund page and to be honest not sure I want to give these fraudsters anymore personal info to work with....???  So I backed out and decided I would take it up with the relevant authorities.

Trading Standards, Ofcom, PhonepayPlus...etc

What I find REALLY hard to believe is that I see posts on here as far back as Dec 2008... So its been going on for this long and as of TODAY its still going on so these fraudsters need to be stopped!!!!!.....

Christmas is coming and I think of all those youngsters with their new phones being caught and it makes me sooooo ANGRY..

yes me too.

Bought a new Samsunbg Tocco Lite, registered it and within one day daughter has played a 'free' trial game during which I beleive it suggests you need the unlock code for full game.  she said she click no but still got charged £4.50.

Have phoned Orange to complain and written to MBIZ via their website asking for a refund.

will also contact samsung to complain as I think this is abusing childrens vunerability in that they don't understand the full implications of clicking on a button within a game.  Clearly the warning signs that it would cost £4.50 were'nt made clear.

http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2007/09/01/2904770.htm

'Jeremy Flynn, former head of commercial partnerships at Vodafone and now CEO of mobile video specialist D2see, says UK operators generally keep around 20% of revenue from premium SMS.

Based on the model of a premium SMS costing 1.50, Orange UK keeps 68 pence including VAT while Virgin Mobile keeps a whopping 98p.'

so if people were wondering why their Mobile Operator appears less tan helpful