Recently at work I ran into someone asking me about one of our cell phone bills which had a weird charge on it. Originally the guy that had the phone thought he had accidentally subscribed to some app service called ‘NewUNeed’ so we went through his phone checking for any apps or anything else which could be causing the additional monthly charge on his cell phone bill but I couldn’t find anything on the phone that was a subscription service, etc.
I asked to look at the bill and saw that it was related to something called NewsUNeed or TheNewsUNeed and started doing some online research. Within a few minutes I found out that this service is known as an SMS cramming service. They often send out an originating text / SMS message to your phone that says ‘If you do not want this service, send STOP to ‘. This is totally the wrong way to do things and is certainly a scam.
A shortcode is a special phone number which is used for text messaging and is usually shorter than a phone number. There are shared short codes where a number of different companies or products can share the same short code, but each have different keywords and some companies have spent the extra money to get their own short code that is either memorable or relates closely to something in their business such as the product name transposed into numbers on the phones keypad.
Generally when you subscribe to a text service you have to initiate the contact yourself after seeing a call to action such as an ad or billboard. You will see a call to actions such as ‘Text to to subscribe’ then once you do that you will get a welcome message for the texting programs.
For some cell service providers such as T-Mobile a double Opt-In is required. You send the original text message to the texting service requesting a subscription, then they will send you a message back asking if you really want to subscribe.
Many text messaging programs are offered for free, in fact I would say a large majority of them. Corporations and Vendors use text programs to build a communications channel with their users and promote their products, specials and discounts. It’s a great way to communicate with people and usually it’s low hassle to boot.
What these crammers and scammers are doing is instead of you sending a message to them, they automatically subscribe you to their service without your permission and then send you a text message which says reply ‘STOP’ to unsubscribe. Most people will write this off as a spam message and not send any response to it at all. Since they do not receive the stop message they continue to bill you each month for a service, and they probably don’t even provide you that service at all or very rarely send you text messages.
The Mobile Marketing Association has set out best practices for running texting programs. Many of these best practices are based on the rules which the cell phone companies have put forward as rules for using their systems. Most text messaging programs are handled by companies which provide fully managed services, they are also known as aggregators. They take a companies business plan and the carriers they wish to support and then handle all the contractual and agreements for your program with all of the different cell service providers. Many aggregators also provide interfaces for sending out and receiving text messages, subscriptions and provide statistics.
You should certainly look over your recent cell phone bills for any unidentified charges. If you don’t jump on this ASAP you are limiting the amount of money that you can be refunded either by the phone company or the company that is doing the cramming. In the case of NewUNeed I have seen one article where a guy called the company and was able to get a credit directly from them. If you can’t get a hold of the company your next resort is to contact your cell phone provider and work with them. But there’s some catches of course. How much is your time worth, how much money did you lose to these crammerscammers and how much of your own time is it worth to recover your money?
You should watch the video below. The video is from Hamid Shojaee at AZDISRUPTORS.COM and covers his own experience in trying to resolve his unauthorized crammer subscriptions and get money refunded, as well as dealing with phone companies to try and get his money back from Jason Hope, a guy who runs a large network of text message cramming and scamming companies.
This guy is bound to become extremely hated, you should look at what he’s doing with your money. He’s building a house twice the size of Bill Gate’s house with tons of amenities, all off the backs of people who don’t even know they’re buying his products!
5 responses to Do You Have Strange Charges on your Cellphone Bill?
Strange charges on your cell phone bill? http://bit.ly/h7hs7o
Not yet and hopefully never but definitely a good thing to know about and is typical of my son he found out ALL about it to help those of us who would not find out half that. Love you Jon. Mom
Hi Mom, love you as always and thanks for being ever positive in response *hug*. I just try to research this stuff because I know other people are suffering through the same problems. As an interesting side note. We DID send the word ‘STOP’ to this group and they refuse to unsubscribe our employees account. We also contacted Verizon and they refused to help us with this. We are currently caught in the middle paying their fees and the wireless phone service provider refuses to help us. I’m really disappointed in Verizon in this instance and I will be calling again. This sucks because it means you have to be more aggressive with the person on tech support, even though it’s not their fault. I will let you know the results.
Do You Have Strange Charges on your Cellphone Bill?
I really like the photos you have at the top on your blogs. That one is a spider web right?
I think the one you are seeing is a flower, they change through a cycle. I originally had my pic up there but when I updated the theme I used the ‘garden and flowers’ header images. Maybe this year I can get some good nature photos of my own to put in the header area 🙂
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