Maloney;267363 wrote:Hate to admit I was conned out of £3. There's a pop up on the Sainsburys Lettuce Know site, which looks as though it's from Sainsburys and showing the Sainsburys logo. There's no mention of their own company, which is Stripey Giraffe. There's a big start button. You're asked for details, so that a code can be sent by SMS letting you into what you think is the Sainsburys site. You then start receiving text messages from Stripey Giraffe charged to you at premium rate. I'm wise to text scams, although I wasn't to the SMS code bit, so keep very little money in my O2 account. As a result, I lost no more than £3, though I've read online of people on contract losing up to £70. I put a STOP on further texts and blocked the number, which appears to have worked. Not much joy from either Sainsburys or O2. Can't do a lot about it was the gist.
Go to O2 and claim fraud (as it was). O2 gave them your money.....
It may only be £3 but I'd "escalate quickly" telling O2 to give your money back or you will go to the police. Give them 24 hours, then do exactly that.
It creates way more than £3 or chaos and disruption for them and eventually they may change behaviour and stop giving your money to other people.
Demand the name and trading address of the recipient company.
Also ask O2 for a VAT receipt for your payment.
When they won't give you one, go to the HMRC and report what you believe is a VAT fraud.
There are hours of mischief you can cause doing things like this and someone, somewhere is going to add your number to a blocked list.