@Chris_K while I'm glad that O2 are looking into it and doing something about it in this instance (forgive me for remaining frustrated and aggrevied about it all until the charges are *actually* rebated on my phone bill), this is clearly NOT a genuine "merchant". This company should not even have my details at all, let alone be under any impression that they have any consent from me to process my data OR use it to charge me for any kind of text - especially since GDPR made it a requirement that a company's actions be made extremely clear and consent is not allowed to be assumed anymore for such commercial purposes. I have never heard of them, never signed up to anything to do with them or anything remotely related to the content of their texts or their PSA company description, never text or communicated with 84222 before - and coming from a dispute resolution and regulatory work background I'm someone who reads the small print before ticking boxes when giving my details out! Even if the company had a "technical issue", it shouldn't have even been POSSIBLE for them to have done anything to me even with a technical issue! (and I imagine it's the same for the other victims too)
What are O2 going to do about it after refunding the charges? These thieves should not be left be. Why don't O2 bar their service from your entire network - every single customer - going forward and stand up to them for the sake of your customers? I would love to see a service that has some guts to proactively do what is truly right and proactively protect their customers to stamp out fraudulent companies like this, not just do the bare minimum to sweep it under the carpet when enough of their customers kick up a fuss.
If you look back at who-called.co.uk for 84222, people have been reporting it since 2017 for the very same thing they did yesterday but just on a smaller scale - it was only a matter of time before they attempted to scale it up and see if they could get a way with it. The only "technical issue" here is that they probably tried to defraud too many people by too much in one go, to keep their low profile of getting away with it! My guess is that if they just get a virtual slap on the wrist for all the theft they carried out yesterday, they'll just learn to remain scaled down in future so they can stay relatively "under the radar" and continue to operate in their fraudulent way. They've already been getting away with it for three years already.
If the regulator won't do their job properly or fast enough to shut them down, why don't you create a working taskforce with the other big phone providers to actively do something together yourselves and stamp this out once and for all? It would show your customers that you're serious about their protection, help retain customers and would save you money, bad press and a massive headache in dealing with things like this as reactive Customer Service issues instead of preventable opportunities if you put a proper system in place. Change does not need to be solely driven/forced by regulation.
It should not be as easy as "they have your phone number" for them to be able to charge people's accounts in the first place. This is an absolutely ridiculous system and O2 should be taking proactive steps to lead the pack and make fundamental changes to protect it's customers when using it's service.
Just because regulation might be different between phone providers and banks and not FORCE you to do certain things to protect your customers, doesn't mean that you can't CHOOSE to do better yourselves.
