Stop the text. I want to get off

Premium rate telephone services watchdog Icstis is investigating mobile download giant Monstermob after Cash highlighted a number of complaints over its charging.

The industry-funded regulatory body initially said it had no 'recent issues' with Monstermob, but then did a U-turn, revealing that it has 17 'open complaints' about one of the company's services that activates under the short code 82468. 'We are now investigating what is quite a complicated service,' said Icstis spokesman Andrew Sullivan.

Complaints on Grumbletext, a website dedicated to consumer complaints about premium rate numbers, show that many users have been disgruntled with Monstermob and its 84268 service. Icstis says that it has given the company a formal warning in the past following complaints that its STOP code was not working.

'We work very closely with Icstis and want to make sure we follow the correct guidelines and work well within these and the network operators' guidelines,' said a spokesperson for Monstermob, a stock market-listed company whose chairman is Hans Snook, founder of Orange. Last week, the company revealed that its half-year profits had quadrupled.

As a result of a mobile phone networks initiative last year, premium rate content providers must stop sending content if a customer texts the word STOP to the short code (for example 82468) from which they are receiving the content. The watchdog says it does not know if customers affected by Monstermob's failed STOP code have been refunded, but that it 'would expect them to be in the case of a technical mistake'. It can insist on a refund only in excpetional circumstances.

Monstermob is not the only premium rate provider being complained about. The Grumbletext website is packed with stories from people who say they have unwittingly ended up paying large sums of money for services they did not want or request.

Cash reader Duncan Green says his 13-year-old son Finlay has been hit by unexpected charges on more than one occasion after downloading a joke from a website. 'He signed up for one joke then kept getting ringtones every day. If he had unintentionally subscribed, it was impossible to find out from the website how to unsubscribe,' says Duncan, who is considering getting his son a new Sim card to stop the problem. 'I honestly haven't felt that helpless in a while - you just have no idea who to turn to.'

'The two main problems people cite with these services is that they've either never requested the texts in the first place or that once they've got them they can't stop them,' says Adrian Harris, founder of Grumbletext. 'The industry response to the former is that if you are getting premium rate texts then you have requested them, as though it is technically impossible for you to get them otherwise.'

'The problem with Icstis is that it's a terribly reactive, not proactive, organisation and the other point is that no one has ever heard of it.'

Icstis operates a code of conduct which premium-rate providers are meant to adhere to; but last month the mobile phone networks introduced their own code, with additional rules, after being inundated with complaints from customers about premium-rate services.

However, the networks say the vast majority of complaints they receive turn out to be because customers have forgotten they have made a commitment to a service or misunderstood that commitment.

The networks' new code states there must be a clear message advertised alongside the short code which has to say how much the service costs and how often they will be charged. Those words have to be no less than 50 per cent of the size of the short code. And anybody who joins a subscription text service should now be sent a free text from the content service provider, including details of the subscription commitment, and this must include a free customer helpline in the message. The content provider should also send a monthly notification SMS or when £20 has been spent on the service, whichever comes first.

'The operators do see some of the responsibility for premium rate services as theirs as they are the billing agent and are normally the first port of call for complaints,' said a spokesperson for O2.

The networks also have an interest in the profitable running of premium rate services. They take a cut of the cost of each reverse billed text message, which typically work out at 30p for every £1.50 text.

To find out who is sending premium rate content to your mobile, input the short code into the search engine on grumbletext.co.uk or www.icstis.org.uk, or contact your network provider, then complain to the company concerned.