That’s how Sally Giles describes the moment she discovered she’d been charged £4.50 each week, every week for more than five years “without [her] knowledge or permission”.
The charge – which totalled more than £1,200 – was added to her phone bill by her provider, EE, allowing her to take part in a competition run by Xinion, owned by BMCM Group.
Xinion says Sally signed up to their service in July 2015.
“They haven’t given me any proof whatsoever that I signed up. They insist I must have gone onto a website and entered my phone number. I have never, ever done that. I would never do something like that.”
Sally says she only found out about the charge when she called her provider about a different query in September 2020 – and the adviser asked her if she knew about this weekly charge she’d been paying for so many years.
“I don’t gamble, I don’t even buy a lottery ticket so no, [I didn’t sign up],” she says.
“The proof is I have never played the game, why would I pay £4.50 a week and never play the game?”
‘Extra charges’
Sally says she did occasionally check her phone bill, but the extra charges weren’t clearly defined so she assumed they were charity donations she made or when she bought more data.
Xinion did send Sally a text each week though asking her a competition question which also explained she was being charged, but she just thought it was a spam text message.
“You have to open the text to see you’re being charged,” she says. “I don’t open texts from unknown sources for obvious reasons because that’s what you’re told all the time. ‘Do not click on links you don’t recognise, just delete it straight away’.
“When I realised what was happening I opened [the text] and at the bottom, right at the bottom, if you scroll down it says you are being charged £4.50. But as I say you have to open the text to see it.”
Paul Muggleton, founder of the Phone-paid Services Consumer Group says it’s irrelevant whether or not people technically sign up – what matters is whether or not people have knowingly signed up for a service.
“People who are tricked into, or who unwittingly sign up to a contract, are not bound by the terms of that contract. That’s basic consumer law. People have to know what they’re getting into.