A company which tried to hoodwink customers into signing up for a premium rate subscription service with the offer of an iPhone 5 – a model not even scheduled to launch until later this year – has been slapped with a £10,000 fine.
According to the judgment by regulator PhonePayPlus, the Bumbalee service run by Mobile Minded used “prizes” to lure punters into signing up to a premium service that charged them £2 every time they received a message.
In the ads, Mobile Minded offered £150 of “free” Morrisons vouchers on Facebook – which turned out to be as elusive as the iPhone 5.
Morrisons dismissed any knowledge of a vouchers deal with Bumbalee and customers clicking on the offer were asked to fill in a survey, before being taken to the subscription site and offered the opportunity to win an iPhone 5.
Entrants paid to do surveys or quizzes and were charged £2 a message with five messages sent a week. PhonePayPlus estimated that the scammers made between £50,000 and £100,000 out of the service.
As well as the £10,000 fine, the company has two weeks to make all their advertising compliant and have been commanded to refund all complainants for the full amount of money spent by them on the service.
