UPDATE: So, in total, 5 of these bogus texts were charged to my bill, totalling £2.50, which is not a lot of money but I'm annoyed by the fact that they did it.
Trying to contact O2 on Twitter went nowhere and the 'chat' with them on FM Messenger has been very frustrating and slow.
You have to wait hours, if not days between replies and it tells me it's not a bot but an actual person, which I don't believe, as the way it words things and ignores what I have said or asked is very bot-like.
I explained the charges are erroneous and that I don't know the number and have no record of any texts to that number in my phone's SMS history or anything, and it just replied, several hours later, ignoring that and telling me that since I sent texts to a number from a non-EU country, the charges are valid. Totally ignored what I had said.
This is after endless, slow security questions and sending me codes etc.
Tried to explain again that I didn't send those texts and they don't exist in my SMS history, and even pointed them to this forum and the other page linking the number in question to a scam and the 'agent', several hours, days later, said they couldn't see these charges on my bill.
Explained AGAIN that it's in there as applying to my UPCOMING bill and and sent a screenshot of the app showing that...
Hours/days go by, and then the 'agent' says they'll have to wait till that bill is issued to see the charges.
New bill was issued yesterday and I sent another message about this, and agent wanted to ask me all the security questions again and send me a code and again, told me that because I had sent texts outside of my allowance for being in Egypt, the charges are valid.
Completely ignored everything I'd already explained up till then, again.
I explained it all again and it was ignored again, and the 'agent' even had the cheek to tell me that maybe 'someone in my family' borrowed my phone and sent the texts, and they are valid charges, which is ridiculous, and very insulting!
Anyway, O2 have graciously agreed to reimburse the £2.50 charged for these bogus texts, which is something, and I know it's only £2.50 so what am I getting so bothered about, but it's the principal of it that infuriates me - that O2 are charging fake text fees to customers' accounts, seemingly relying on customers not noticing, or not bothering to challenge it, as it's quite a small amount, and then if the customer does complain, hit them with a brick wall of non/bad comms and blame them for sending texts that they never did, never acknowledging anything said about it being bogus or fraudulent.
I showed the agent the link to this forum which discusses the very mobile number that I was wrongly charged texts to, and showed them the link to the lookup site that identifies that number as being involved in a scam, but that was ignored.
The only people who could benefit from that, as far as I can see, are O2 themselves, as I don't see how any 3rd party could gain monetarily from somehow faking texts to that number from my account (or even be able to do it), and it is O2 that I pay the bill to, so it does appear to be a fraud on the part of O2.
I know I shouldn't expend so much time and energy over a couple of quid, but I hate being ripped off and I hate being fobbed off by bad Customer Service too, so it really pushes my buttons!
Argh!
