Beware of phantom cellphone charges and DADAmobile!
Last month I noticed some suspicious charges on my cellular phone bill and called my provider (Cingular wireless) to find out what they were all about. They weren't much, maybe totalling $5 or $10, but I didn't know what they were for since I don't subscribe to a lot of extras on my cellphone.
I was told these "Premium Text Messages" were things like horoscopes, enhanced text news reports or special ringtones. I have never subscribed to any such thing, I repeat I never, EVER, EVER subscribed to anything like this nor do I have any intentions of doing so. The Cingular representative took off the charges and offered to "block" my phone number from this happening in the future, which I agreed to.
Surprise, surprise... This month more "Premium Text" charges, this time totalling nearly $50. I called Cingular again and had to argue a bit but finally got the representative to credit me the charges I never incurred. I also got him to tell me the name and phone number of the company that was trying to bill me. He told me it was something like "M-blocks, " and when I called the number he'd given me for that company they referred me to DADAmobile.
Guess what? You can't possibly get a live person when you call DADAmobile, so I had no way of asking how they got my number and what they were charging me for. There was, however, an automated option to "unsubscribe" my mobile number, which I did. I went online and sent email to DADAmobile (still hoping to find out how and why they were billing my cellphone for services I've never requested nor received) and guess what? In response to every email sent, I received a standard form reply, which follows. At least my cellphone provider was willing to reverse the charges when I argued, because who knows what this is?
Hello, thankyou for your email.
If you were requesting clarification on a technical problem we will endeavour to investigate your request and reply as quickly as possible. If you have questions regarding the terms and conditions of the service
we will get back to you as soon as possible, however in the meantime you may be able to find the answer to your queries here ttp://us. Dadamobile.com/inc/us/terms.html
Thankyou for your collaboration.
Kind regards,
DADAmobile
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