“I was absolutely horrified and I actually felt quite violated”. That’s how Sally Giles describes the moment she discovered she’d been charged £4.50 each week, every week for more than five years “without [her] knowledge or permission”. The charge – which totalled more than £1,200 – was added to her phone bill by her provider, EE, allowing her to take part in a competition run by Xinion, owned by BMCM Group.
Xinion says Sally signed up to their service in July 2015. “They haven’t given me any proof whatsoever that I signed up. They insist I must have gone onto a website and entered my phone number. I have never, ever done that. I would never do something like that.” Sally says she only found out about the charge when she called her provider about a different query in September 2020 – and the adviser asked her if she knew about this weekly charge she’d been paying for so many years. “I don’t gamble, I don’t even buy a lottery ticket so no, [I didn’t sign up],” she says. “The proof is I have never played the game, why would I pay £4.50 a week and never play the game?”
We often find that businesses can also be paying for hidden charges from their suppliers and would happily review this for you.
Source (BBC Website, October 2020).
