Telstra Premium SMS Outage causes grief
We received an Email from a source working in the Premium industry we thought we’d copy/paste to give you uncut. It appears that Telstra, ACMA and the TIO are really good friends as Telstra gets away with everything…
“In the period 13 July to 18 July 2010 the Telstra network COMPLETELY went down for Premium [...]
ACCC goes after Clarion
You remember those scratchcards from our friends at Clarion? (hint: scroll down!)
Well, that promotion has landed them in hot water with the ACCC who have ordered an interim injunction against the company requiring them to send a free SMS to all customers informing them of the costs of claiming their prizes.
From the ACCC website:
The ACCC [...]
The Luck of the Irish (part 2)
Here is the next update on the Irish Gavin and Iain McConnon broth
ers from “Clarion Marketing”, Moviestar”, “Global Billing”, “Prime Media”, “Promocom Ireland”, “Falcon Telecom”, “Puppy Promotions”, “Promotion Payments”, “Value Group”, “Parcel Plus” and all the other aliases they “work” under.
We were contacted by their Australian Lawyers, “Axis Legal Pty Ltd”, bragging about “Defamation” of [...]
Luck of the Irish
For legal reasons we have been asked to remove this post about the McConnon brothers.
We have decided to simply comply and let others speak for us.
News on the Missed Call Marketing Story
We have been contacted by Mr Kelvin Evans who has threatened legal action if we do not remove the information provided by COB today.
Mr Evans claims that he is not the mastermind behind the Missed Call Marketing scheme, of course not knowing the evidence we have at hand. Suffice to say it would stand up [...]
Telstra vs Oxygen 8 – a PR exercise?
Telstra is obviously continuing to attempt to polish their public image and make a PR victory out of their own failures.
As you know, we’re more than happy to out dodgy premium sms scams, but one thing we can’t agree with (particularly in today’s harsh economic climate) is the ruination of a company for purely political [...]
Vision 6 Responds
In response to our previous post on Vision6, their marketing manager has written in to explain their side of the story:
My name is Lisa Renneisen and I am the marketing manager for Vision 6. I just wanted to clarify the situation with regards to your post about the Vision 6 Woolworths premium SMS scam;
Vision 6 [...]
As promised, the DC-Marketing dirt
When we first came together, Team 4WM decided that our first order of business should be to investigate DC-Marketing, the original scammers behind the infamous missed-call-marketing scheme in 2006.
Originally it was thought that a large European consortium was behind the scheme. However, working with our colleagues in the industry, we’ve uncovered the real low-down.
The whole [...]
Hyarchis responds!
In an unusual twist, Hyarchis has responded to ACMA’s earlier announcement of a formal spam warning. From Secure Computing:
Hyarchis has described the formal warning issued to it by ACMA over alleged SMS spam as a ‘slap in the face’ that sets a dangerous precedent for the entire web marketing industry.
The firm premium SMS marketing firm, [...]
Problems with ’stop’ requests?
As you know, we get a lot of people contacting us regarding the various SMS services out there. Some are legit, many are out-and-out scams. One of the most common complaints regarding these services is that they don’t action ’stop’ requests, so you keep getting sent messages and charged even after you SMS in ’stop’.
In [...]
