Scam "Game 0.82" on your phone bill? Buongiorno / B!Games scam

[blackberryjack]

Like many of your correspondents, I too have been charged £0.82 per week on my monthly EE phonebill since 15th August 2013!

I have just discovered from EE who these charges are attributed to and they immediately put a STOP on it. As a result, I have had an email from Buongiorno customer services telling me I must have signed up to a free 7 day trial and have never consequently UNSUBSCRIBED. Like many of us, I am rather lax at checking my monthly bill until this week when I discovered what was going on.

I was offered, as a good will gesture, a full and final refund of £3.96!

I categorically rejected this proposal and said I wanted the full 156 weeks refunded. The response was to increase the good will refund offer to £77.72. Again I have rejected the offer, informed them I had notified ActionFraud and told them I would be pusuing the full amount plus interest through the Small Claims Court which can easily be done online.

It only costs a Court Fee of £25 to register a claim for any amount under £300 and if you are successful, you get the money refunded, with interest plus the Court Fee.

I am hoping that by persistently pressurizing Buongiorno, I hope they may see sense and make a full refund without the need for me to resort to County Court action.

[Damienw1]

@blackberryjack did you ever subscribe to the 7 day trial? 

[blackberryjack]

I would never dream of signing up for such a trial.
How many people over the age of 60 would even contemplate playing games?

[Damienw1]

@blackberryjack I wasn't suggesting you did I hope you get your full money back as you say even you you go to court I'm sure you will win 

[blackberryjack · Accepted solution]

I am pleased to report that Buongiorno games.com have refunded all the charges made over the past 3 years.

A speedy resolution to a very unpleasant experience.

[Damienw1]

@blackberryjack Excellent news Well done shows it really is worth pushing these things 

[merefield]

Just in case you haven't read the other similar thread.

I got caught by this and was charged over several months.

Here's where I got to:

Two updates from me:

1. After having escalated this issue via many routes including the Police and via my MP (and getting into the inbox of the Minister of State for Digital & Culture!), after initially getting a flat no from Buongiorno games I finally got them to change their mind and they re-imbursed me in full for my money (but not my lost time!) so long as I agreed not to pursue them further.  Do persist!!!

2. This is almost certainly a Clickjacking attack (see https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Clickjacking).  Someone is maliciously including a payload in adware or some other distribution method that basically overlays webpages you are viewing with a transparent frame which makes you think you are clicking on one link but in fact you are clicking theirs.  I found http requests in my iCloud history to their site though I had never seen any of their content.  Someone from their company or someone who wants them to get into trouble with the law is perpetrating this.

A few more things:

1. this attack will probably persist until the offending code is removed from whatever platform its sitting on or Buongiorno games updates their web services such that these calls are no longer valid.  Quite incredible how much distruption this is causing and quite amazing that an apparently legitimate business has malicious code sitting on the net!

2. EE should implement a text message from themselves whenever you sign up to a premium 3rd party service so that you do not ignore it as spam - a simple measure that would prevent all this mess.

3. We should be given the right to request our phone number is NOT exposed by our phones to 3rd parties when browsing.  That's a breach of privacy that I'm not happy about and facilitates the illegal transactions that you haven't sanctioned knowingly.

I recommend you request EE block premium services on your account immediately as this will prevent this from occuring on your account in future.  This should be done by default IMHO

[Lee_H]

Hi @merefield and welcome to the Community.

I will certainly pass all the feedback to the relevant teams.

Many thanks,

Lee

[merefield]

My pleasure.

The rotters!  I suspect its included as payload in adware which would have maximum distribution and the reason its got so far and wide, the only alternative would be hacking individual sites and that would hardly be efficient.

Incredible this malicious code has trapped people over 4 years!

[Newyorker]

I've just discovered this on my bill and am in the processing of trying to claim my money back. It's odd that this company started taking money out of my bill on the day the pay as you go was set up without me even subscribing to anything. I'm surely EE is linked to this company and passes information on as it appears that only EE customers have this problem. I've read about hundreds of cases online. EE should be chasing my refund. 

Check your bills closely  every month people.