Noatel games network

[ajax65]

Has anyone else had a £4.50 charge on their account for noatel games network. My number is used only for mobile wifi- I don't even know it and have never given it out let alone signed up to anything with it. I have now unsubscribed but would love to get any idea how or why they managed to scam me. The only people that know this number is Vodafone themselves. Any ideas?

[BandOfBrothers]

You may never get to the root to how the subscription was set up @ajax65 

Typically it's a link / internet page a person has innocently visited etc.

More info and advice in psauthority.org.uk.

[hrym]

There was a very interesting piece on last week's BBC Watchdog about this kind of issue.   One of their conclusions was that the writers of pop-ups may not be entirely honest (what a susprise!).   If you get an unsolicited ad, always close it using operating system controls, not a button within the ad itself.   There may be a button that says "Close Window", but it's perfectly possible for the code behind it to in be sign you up for the "service" promoted.

This would be a convincing explanatiion for what's happened when people insist they're never signed up for anything.   The PayForIt system is, of course, although convenient, not exactly fit for purpose.   Interestingly, some networks won't enable a payment until the user has confirmed to them, usually via a text (further caveat: watch out for spoofed texts!)

[cosine]

I had the same on my vodafone sim of my Wifi dongle.

I agree that vodafone is partly to blame here. They should not leak the mobile nr/sim nr to websites. 

[cosine]

I actually made money of these scumbags!

My vodafone wifi dongle got signed up noatel games network.
Now a wifi dongle is basically a mobile phone without screen or keyboard. It has a phone number and can receives SMS, but it impossible to sign up to things ‘by accident’; I don’t even know the number of the dongle by heart.

I complained to vodafone complaints dept. that they must have leaked my phone number, as no one else has access to it. After some hassling, they gave the amount back as goodwill.
(so not formally refunding or admitting blame).

Meanwhile, noatel refunded me after I complained.

So made some money out of this!
Still it would be better if the law would not allow this.

[JokkerTG]

Hah, I would better play in some real games like escape room quest with my friends. When last weekend we've chosen to play escape room game, a friend of mine recommended us a great one called Komnata ( here is their website: komnata.co.uk/london/ ), which gave us some different variants of quests. We've decided to choose the hardest quest, and thanks to our team-work play, we've done everything great and won it.