I would like to tell people of a so called service that is invading our lives. It has just come to my attention in the last 24 hours that my cell phone bill has been modified without my consent. When I contacted my cell phone carrier, they stated it came from a third party and they are not responsible.
I ended up talking to several people at my cell carrier (Sasktel) including the Manager on shift. I am not sure if I have raised my voice loud enough to make a point with Sasktel to help make sure this does not happen to others. If I have not I will be addressing this situation to as many people as I can through the internet.
So let's talk about what happened. First of all I should say I do not analyze my bills the way that some people do. Maybe from this time forward I should so companies that I will talk about can not take away our hard earned money illegally. We have a phone through Sasktel it's only purpose is to be forwarded to another phone. We own a business and give the people a number they can call locally. This phone does not have any other purpose it just sits in the bedroom charging and forwards each call.
The wife and I decided to see if we could lower this bill because we do not need features on it, because it is not used. When talking to customer support (Sasktel) we were seeing where we could decrease our monthly payment. We inquired about the $10.50 charge that has been on our account. At this point we only had 2 bills in front of us, so as far as we knew at this time it was for only 2 months. The Sasktel rep mentioned that this was due to a Premium Text Messaging service. Now I am thinking why do I need Premium Text Messaging on a phone that the only job is to forward to another phone. This phone does not even ring so a ring tone would be useless, Wallpaper on a phone that is not used is also useless.
After talking to 2 representatives I needed to talk to some one in-charge because they offered me a 50% refund (Sasktel) if I settled this right away (basically in my eyes this would mean admitting guilt). Really! we can just be bought off when we never gave any permission that we wanted their service (Motime.ca) and have Sasktel take $10.50 a month off our bill. Wait people this gets interesting.
The manager from Sasktel stated I have to look after this myself even though we never gave anyone permission to do this. Once I got off the phone with Sasktel I decided to do some digging, this is dangerous because this allows me to see that I am not the only one out there that this kind of stuff is happening to. We need to stand up people and put a stop to companies doing this behind our backs without our consent.
We own a small computer company and I specialize in computer security: The reason I am saying this is because the only people that could of possible responded to a text would have been me and my wife or a 10 year old boy. I know I never did and my wife would not also do this because like I said the phone does not ring and we would not look at the wallpaper on this phone. So this only leaves a 10 year old boy. So can a 10 year old boy change a persons cell phone plan? Apparently, now why do I have to verify when I call Sasktel? So they can make sure they are talking to me, when a 10 year old minor can change my cell phone with no verification.
I would have to say this was illegal and we need to tell the world. Sasktel needs to step up their security to make sure innocent people are not becoming victims. It is easy to do Sasktel just have every change on a bill be verified simple. I have now gone back on my bills and found that this was going on since we first got the phone. So did this come with the number? Oh wait one other person did use our phone that was not a minor it was the Sasktel Rep.
Scott
Leask,#2Author of original report
Thu, July 24, 2014
I would like to add that after reading the Terms and Condition on Motimes website thast a person 13 or under can not even add this service but they did!
In the terms and conditions from http://www.motime.ca/help/terms/ it states:
"AGE & RESIDENCY. You must live in Canada and be at least 13 years old to use our Service and you must be an adult where you live to become a Subscriber. If you are a minor in the province or territory in which you reside (generally under age 18 or 19) you can only register for our Service, use our Non-Subscription Services or become a Subscriber if you get consent from your parent or legal guardian (“parent”). If you are under 13 you may not use our Service at all."