Warning: Cheap Phone Service Scam

[thedi]

Cheap phone service providers advertise with very good prices for international calls. One such provider in Germany (predeal 01056, PM2 Telecommunications) increased last summer its prices from 2 cents/minute to 1.50 Euro/minute (by factor 75). In the same time they stopped the usual announcement of prices before they made a connection ('for technical reasons'). Users of this service got now bills of up to several hundred Euro from their normal telefon provider company - which automatically collects costs for this cheap providers. Many users may not even be aware of this scam, because they did not ask for detailled bills.

If your wife likes to call her relatives in Thailand through cheap providers, tell her to check the announcement of connection costs before she gets a connection. Do not use providers without such cost announcements - hung up immediately if there is no a cost announcement.

Original article in German: http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Kos...all-877851.html

Regards

Thedi

[crev]

2 cents to 1.5 Euro? Thats like thousand percent...not sure how many thousands. I was once a victim too but only with those prepaid cards you can buy on convenience stores. Since then I uses Onesuite long distance services and never go back to scammy prepaid phone cards. thanks for sharing this scam, I hope ThaiVisa members gets to read it so they won't be a victim of this scam.

[Jiu-Jitsu]

It's interesting that you mention this, as my girlfriend is just dealing with this at the moment. I have advised her to block payment for now, whilst we look at the legal options.

[infernalman7]

I agree. Prepaid services are always the way to go even though it may not be the cheapest option but you will never experience a surprise bill.

[sumrit]

I agree. Prepaid services are always the way to go even though it may not be the cheapest option but you will never experience a surprise bill.

Not necessarily so, I've just read this comment on another forum.

Over Christmas ****** was unable to log in to our voipdiscount service/account to call her family in Thailand. Each time she tried she got the same message 'the username/password is invalid'.

That was rather strange as the account was set to automatically login and neither of us had changed the login details. Just in case there was a problem with ******** laptop, I tried to log in to the account on 3 other machines - all with the same result.

I followed voipdiscount's procedure for password retrieval but the emails never arrived. I tried to contact voipdiscount to find out what the problem was but in order to contact customer services you have to log in to your account, we couldn't. I then followed their procedure for 'hijacked' accounts, just in case this was the problem, but still error messages were displayed. Again, to report a security or fraud issue you must check-in and/or provide the current email address of the account.

At the time I thought nothing of it and presumed there was a technical issue at voipdiscount, that was until today. Because I travel a great deal I have current accounts in different currencies, today I logged in to my Euro account to ensure a payment had been received in preparation for a trip this weekend. When checking the account I notice 2 transactions dated 30/12/09 and 31/12/09 each for the sum of €119.60 - a value of €239.20.

Now I become concerned. I attempt again to contact voipdiscount but, apart from logging in to your account (which I cannot) there is no way of contacting them. voipdiscount is one of many trading names used by a company called Betamax GmbH & Co. KG, which purports to be a German registered company.

I try to find their physical EU address but the T&Cs on all their websites simply state ”Betamax GmbH & Co. KG ("Betamax") with registered address in Cologne, Germany, and living within the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany and/or having or having been allocated a German telephone number”. This information is contrary to what EU law requires to be provided to consumers. Despite great efforts of trying to find a telephone number for Betamax and/or a physical address so far I have been unable to do so. I have found one address and phone number but that appears not to be genuine.

Doing a quick search on Google I find that I am not the first to have had monies taken by voipdiscount/Betamax without permission – many others report unauthorised charges to their credit/debit cards and PayPal accounts over a period of time - several years in fact. Sums taken are alleged to be form €10 + VAT up to US$2,000!

As I mentioned above, Betamax GmbH & Co. KG trades under many different retail and wholesale names – if anyone here uses any of the following websites/services for phone calls and you have saved your credit/debit card or PayPal details with them be warned:

12voip

BudgetSIP

Calleasy

DialNow

FreeCall

InternetCalls

Intervoip

JustVoip

LowRateVoip

NetAppel

Nonoh

Poivy

SIPDiscount

SmartVoiP

SMSdiscount

SmsListo

SparVoip

VoipBuster

VoipBusterPro

VoipCheap

VoipDiscount

VoipRaider

VoipStunt

VoipWise

VoipZoom

WebCallDirect

I would suggest those who have saved their credit/debit or PayPal details with any of the above sites remove their saved details immediately.

Edited January 17, 2010 by sumrit

[dttk0009]

I noticed my that I'm now burning through 200 baht on Dtac in a couple of days up from what used to take something like a month. The price increase is pretty obvious. Is True any better? AIS?

[SouthIndian]

For Betamax products, better buy credit from local resellers for a minimum value always!