I discovered this scam by being a victime on 8/12. I topped up using my phone $ into my pay per use virgin mobile account in the amount of 40.00, I then purchased a packaged plan of 25.00, when I checked my remaining balance five seconds later it only showed 5.00 left in my account when there should have been 15.00. I called Virgin Mobile to see what had transpired and they showed no record of a charge going through on my account. They did have a record of the 40.00 top up and a record of the purchase of a 25.00 plan and so they were confused as to where the 10.00 missing dollars had gone. They told me that they would call me back in four hours because that is the amount of time it takes for charges to show up on their end?
In the meantime I looked through my phone and found an odd text message that had come through during the time of my top up... in fact it occured exactly at the time of my top up. It was from a company called Mind Quiz. The message stated that I had subscribed to a monthly package and if I did not want this monthly charge to reoccur I need to reply "Stop". I had never heard of this company before in my life, I had never subscribed to a monthly package and I had never authorized a charge to my virgin mobile account. The message was very cryptic and all mashed together, but in it I found a phone #1 (877) 707-1775. I called the number and the person who picked up said the name of the company was called mobile media solutions (premium text messages) and they told me that Virgin Mobile had authorized the charges and that they could not reverse them. I argued this for quite awhile until they told me that they could mail me a refund of 9.99 to my home address but that was all that they could do. I accepted that but told them that I had never authorized this charge and did not want any further contact with them. They told me I had to reply "stop" to the text message that came to my phone. I did this. I wrote down the name of the person I talked with and her employee # as well as a confirmation # for my refund check. I then looked up the name of "Mobile Media Solutions" on the internet and discovered several complaints about a phishing scam. This is happening all over America in every state! It is criminal.
I then called my phone provider Virgin Mobile back to inform them of this horrible scam that is occuring with their permission and was hung up on by a Virgin Mobile representative. I called back and informed the person who answered that I would like to speak to a manager, this took a long time. When I finally did get through to a manager she was not helpfull at all.in the end they told me that there still was no charge showing on their end and that I would have to wait until the charge showed up for them to dispute it or challenge it. I gave the manager the name of the company and told her that is was a scam and that I wanted them blocked on my phone. They told me this would block all incoming text messages and that I needed to reply "stop" to the text message that was sent to me... How did they know this information? My gut instinct tells me they knew all along. I have yet to get a refund or a credit to my account. Although 10.00 is a minor amount, add up 1,500 people who recieve a bogus 9.99 charge to their cell phone accounts... Now we see the damage. It is illegal and immoral and it needs to be stopped!
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