|
Report in full:
Is the service real? It appears to be, which is not to say whether
it is good, bad, or indifferent, but it exists, unlike some other
promotions we report on. A lot of the companies we
report on do their best to stay as invisible as possible - the company
which provides the technology platform for (but has told us does not promote) this service is
called Switchfire Ltd and has a reasonably comprehensive website at www.switchfire.com.
There are one or two mentions of them in the press, and they are keen to
publicise their services, of which this is one.
Switchfire has advised that any requests which recipients wish to make
to be removed from the promoter's marketing list, and also any complaints
they wish to make, should be directed to them for the time being. Whilst
you may choose to contact them, you should equally consider whether you
wish to complain to ICSTIS
on the basis of the information below.
Does the
service work? We don't know, but we can
tell you that assuming it does it is likely that you will
receive a substantial number of text messages costing you �1.50 for every message you receive.
What is clear in our opinion is that the text you received is
improperly marketing the service to you and as such you have
been spammed, and should report the text received to ICSTIS. Here are some of the reasons why in our
opinion ICSTIS
will be in a good position to take action:
1) By sending the first message from a normal (ie
non-premium) number, they are betting that people who complain
about getting the message unsolicited will be told by ICSTIS
that they can't do anything because it isn't premium rate (which
is what ICSTIS regulates). So, you need to refer to the
second message as well when you report them, because it is
this one which advertises the premium rate service, 89252, and
therefore this one where the rules are broken. On this basis you
should say that you think the service is misleading in that you
are not told that it is a commercial premium rate service in the
first message, only in the second.
2) If there is no company contact information, not even a
PO Box number, (they seem to have started including this
information now but if it isn't there it's reportable) then in our opinion this is a violation
of the ICSTIS
code of conduct
3) You have to scroll down through a blank screen to obtain
the pricing information - again a violation in
our opinion, because
you could easily be fooled into not realising the service was
going to cost you money if you thought you had gotten to the end
of the text message in the blank screen without scrolling down
to the price information
4) In our opinion, there are other issues to do with a) it being
unsolicited b) it being sexual in nature and potentially
received by under 16s c) no terms and conditions information d)
no Data Protection information given that they are collecting
your personal details
So, you know what to do then - Report
it to ICSTIS!
|
