Category Archives: Scams

Description of nasty scams that I have come across

Phones, Ramblings, Scams

EE Marketing Trick

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I have a Galaxy A14 smartphone on an EE pay-monthly contract that I manage for a disabled relative. Their last couple of phone bills have each been more than £90 and when I looked into it, this was because they were using Directory Enquiries to get the numbers they wanted to call.  I explained how to store popular numbers in the phone but this was too much hassle for them, especially as they never saw the phone bill, even though each enquiry was costing between £5 and £12!

I’d set a spend cap of £20, so why wasn’t this kicking in? Because calls to Directory Enquiries are excluded from the price cap.  What? Other companies such as O2 do include such calls.

But that wasn’t all.  When I logged into my account, it stated that the contract was unlimited calls, 5 GB data ‘£25 per month’, yet I was being charged £36 per month plus £50 directory enquiries!!!

When I asked how this could be, I was told that ‘Unlimited calls … £25 per month..’ was the name of the contract, not the amount.

This is absurd. It is as if I advertised a plane ticket to the USA as ‘a £200 everything included’ ticket, and then sent the client a bill for £1,000, saying ‘You should have read the small print, Sir! £200 is the name of the ticket, not the price!!’  Can you believe it?? And EE is a company owned by BT, who clearly no longer seem to believe in British values.

That is all bad enough, but it got even worse.  Their app gave some blurb about how much I could save on mobile phone contracts with them, because I was an EE home broadband customer. So I asked the guy on the phone what was the best deal he could offer me.  He claimed that he had a really good deal that included a Samsung Tablet for only £28 per month on a 2-year contract. I reminded him that my relative can’t use a tablet and I already have an iPad.  After pressing him, he offered a series of slightly cheaper deals, but I got too distressed by his attempts to be clever and hung up after telling him that I would go into an EE or O2 shop.

There, I got a deal for unlimited calls and data on a rolling monthly contract for £16 a month.  I’m not saying I couldn’t have got something even cheaper if I’d shopped around, but this was less than half the price I’d been paying and without a long-term buy-in.

I can’t express how disappointed I am by their marketing tactics, plus I no longer have any trust in them. How the mighty are fallen!

Scams

Senior Railcard – a swizz

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I bought a 3-year Senior Railcard towards the end of 2018.  It cost £70 and they claimed I would get my money back ‘in just a few journeys’. Ha-ha-ha!

I had realised that I couldn’t use it to travel in the morning peak, before 9.30 on weekdays, nor on the London Underground unless I splashed out for a Travelcard, but I thought that I would get the money back over time.  Then the lockdown came in March 2020 and lasted until about July 2021.  OK there were a few legal relaxations, but who wanted to take the risk of public transport until we had got vaccinations and the incidence of Covid was much reduced?  So for about half its validity, the Railcard has been useless.

Ironically, on two occasions that I have wanted to use it, the rail service to London was replaced by a bus, meaning the journey was slow and unpleasant and I was late for the art exhibitions I wanted to attend.  Of course, there is no warning about this when you buy the rail tickets.

Worse, when you look at their website, it says that ‘a decision taken at the highest level was that the validity of Railcards would not be extended since the rail services continued to be available during lockdown!’  I can imagine trying to justify a journey during lockdown, ‘I know my journey isn’t essential Officer, but I must not waste my Railcard. I have this information on the highest authority.’

Whilst it would be too strong to call the situation a scam, my Railcard has been incredibly bad value.  I think it is no more than a sop to regulators so that they can claim they offer benefits to Seniors. It’s sad because I do like travelling by train.

Ramblings, Scams

Fake DHL message scam

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I’ve just sent an item abroad using the DHL courier service, which is expensive but reliable – these days there are more hurdles than ever to sending items abroad, including customs tariffs, so it is essential to use a firm that will handle it properly.

Then I got a text purporting to be from DHL giving a tracking link.  Since I use DHL a lot, this didn’t look like their usual message, particularly as the URL looked odd.  And not long after I got another similar text with a different URL.

I’d already decided that the message was dodgy and I used my official order number and went directly to the DHL tracking site to check on the progress of my item.  Now I’ve read that there are thousands of these texts going out and if you log into the supplied URL, you are encouraged to install an app which contains a virus that replicates the message to everyone in your contact list. it is said to be effectively a ‘denial of service’ attack.  Sadly we are now at the stage where the bigger the company, the less you can be sure that messages are genuine.

I was even suspicious of an email from BT telling me that my phone line was going digital.  Since it is not asking me to do anything, I’m pretty sure it is genuine, especially as it is highly unlikely that a scammer could have correctly guessed some of the information in the email.