@Cleoriff I already registered with the TPS a long time ago, doesn't seem to have done anything to prevent this (although in fairness it's probably prevented other stuff). Already reported it to the ICO and O2 (7226) yesterday immediately after it happened.
I just got off the phone with O2 about it as their lines opened at 8. They've said they're raising an investigation and I'll get the outcome in seven days but from their side of things with these scams they tend to believe there is a link between the (my) phone number and the company somewhere that justifies having charged the account - and don't take any responsibility at all for anything that happens inbetween or attempting to prevent it. Imagine a company hosting one of the most important services you use in life in 2020 saying they have no interest in preventing fraud and just let charges through.
I also asked for anything related to premium rates and anything related to direct carrier billing to be blocked from my account and they didn't seem keen on doing it at first. I managed to get out of them by the end of the call that apparently they've blocked premium rates from charging my account in future but they seemed hesitant to getting to that stage or acknowledging it. I had to go round in circles being told that because I have an "old tariff" (it's probably three, maybe four years old?) that I didn't have any protection on my account against this, which is just ridiculous. Protection (spend limits at the very least) should be a flatline basic for every consumer but I was told my account wasn't "eligible" for such protection just because of the age of my tariff. It's not like it's a 20 year old tariff made for landline phones! And why aren't people even warned about not having any protection? Banks and credit card companies don't make you sign up to entirely new accounts when they release new baseline protections for consumer rights - they integrate them into existing accounts (yes they may replace your card, but they don't change your account for baseline consumer protections). I've had the same bank and phone accounts for almost 20 years and never once have I had to change my bank account just to be protected from obvious fraud.
I mean being sent and charged for exactly the same text over 100 times within seconds of each other should be an absolute red flag to ANY business that something dodgy is going on and they should have automated systems that block it - if it was a legitimate service, it would not be sending exactly the same text multiple times and no legitimate business has any need to be sending that many texts, that quickly, especially when direct carrier billing can be used for charging larger sums to phone accounts these days instead of charging by text. But it seems like there was no system in place to detect or block this kind of behaviour. It just seems bizarre to me that there's no protection.
It honestly scared the **** out of me that something like this is even possible as a scam. I know fraud happens through banking/financial services all the time but at least in that there are regulations in place that involve the banks (to a degree) and they're obliged to do something about it. From everything I've experienced and read in the last 12 hours, it seems like phone companies don't like getting involved and rarely do much to help people. It's not the fact that the scam is possible that scares me, it's the disinterest in protecting consumers (victims) that scares me.
I have zero trust in the scam company ever putting things right so just fingers crossed for the O2 investigation.
