Complaint Review: PredictoMobile

Noticed an unusual charge to my AT&T account for $9.99 for a predictive news game. Investigated and realized it was a phone game whereby participants predict the outcome of news events, earning or losing points in their account based on the outcome of their predictions.

The service is accessed by mobile phone texting. Since my wife was receiving unsolicited texts on her phone and simply deleting them she thought nothing of it until we noticed the suspicious charges on this and last months bill. I texted a STOP message to the company and then called their customer service.

A person in India gave me the usual "sorry about that you idiot" response in as much as they claim that in order to signup for the service one must resend to their text with a return text including a pin number. Since neither my wife nor I even have pre-paid texting service on our phone it is not possible that ever happened.

The company is sticking by their position that we voluntarily signed up for the service based on records specific to their company. In other words, we are obviously lying and we can go to hell.

AT&T has been kind enough to refund our money, which was a nominal amount. Given that our normal bill is many pages long it is possible we could have continued this scam for many months without realizing it. This company is essentially stealing from people and sighting their own records as evidence contradicting the consumer's denials.

Jack
Escondido, California
U.S.A.