What a momentous day for America, the world and um, the 'world's largest mobile transaction network'!

To be honest though, I'm more excited Barak Obama than Andrew Dark.  Obama brings hope and the promise of change.  Dark?  Well the name doesn't help, does it?  Reminds me of one of their former CEOs!

Andrew Bud on Andrew Dark: "With his proven track record in growing companies and his excellent operational experience, Andrew is ideally suited to leading mBlox to the next level in growth and excellence. I’d also like to thank Jeff Clark for leading the company through a period of enormous growth with commitment and integrity.”

I think there's plenty of room for growth in integrity at mBlox...

...complaining about unfair charges, no less (yet again!)

BBC: Smartphones drive mobile markets

Highlights include:

• "It was a goodish year," said Bud, clearly forgetting how he had to resign from the board of PhonepayPlus due to a serious conflict in interest
• He makes special mention of the mobile services of Facebook, Bebo and MySpace - all of which are free to use and don't involve exorbitant premium rate charges from the likes of his company
• BBC: Research by Mblox showed a huge discrepancy between the amounts people using different operators in different countries will pay when downloading or browsing the web
• BBC: Few people were willing to risk downloading as they were worried about racking up huge charges. (Psst Bud, people are racking up huge charges because companies like yours don't vet the companies they do business with properly)
• "The price consumers see should be the price they pay," said Mr Bud.

If anyone needs reminding, Andrew Bud runs the company mBlox which is constantly in trouble with the regulator for things like unsolicited charges, hidden charges and other no so sporting things.  People have suffered (and continue to suffer) bill shock because of his company.  Children and pensioners have had to get rid of their PAYG mobiles because of companies like his draining the credit from them as soon as they top up.

Mr Bud, you should really get YOUR house in order before you pretend to be some kind of consumer champion and demonise other companies in the mobile arena.

Some recent nuggets from mBlox's Andrew Bud...

2009 could be a pivotal year for rich mobile content, but for this to happen, consumers need a transparent pricing mechanism to purchase rich content. Content providers need to be sure that their consumers are treated fairly

Mmm, how about consumers getting to choose whether they want 'rich' content in the first place?  Some of us don't want any so-called 'premium' content that we've not asked for.  Why not concern yourselves with that first, eh, Bud?

Ultimately we believe the price consumers see should be the price they pay. The current system of data pricing is severely restricting the growth of the mobile content market as consumers fear facing frightening bills.

Word of advice - get your own ship in order before babbling on about fairness and transparency elsewhere.

And for the rest of you, check out the following links...

Mblox: Data charging situation still hideous

The Hidden Costs of Mobile Downloads of a Music Track

and while you're at it, how about this excellent article over at Mobile Industry Review :-)

Yesterday I received a letter from my bank and enclosed with it a returned cheque.  The cheque that Spread Media gave me bounced (as I suspected).  David Shepard's Spread Media and Spread Mobile have already shut up shop and it looks like it's just a matter of time before his other worthy enterprises do the same.

Despite him still having my money, he's not a very good scamster!  I mean all that effort, for what?  Although it must be great scamming people when you don't need to trick them, just send premium rate messages to a bunch of random numbers and hey presto.  The likes of mBlox make it possible.

Anyway, Hotwire PR and mBlox, you wanna help me get my money back and give me some answers while you're at it?  Cheers guys.  As for PhonepayPlus... don't get me started!

Wham! George joins Andrew for reunion.

George Kidd dramatically resigned as Chief Exec at unregulator PhonepayPlus this week under a cloud (well it's been a bit overcast in London these last few days!)  Nobody has gone public as to why nor is it known whether this has anything to do with the recent resignation of Andrew Bud.

Readers may remember Bud was surrounded in controversy due to the conflict of interest between his role as regulator-extraordinaire and mBlox founder and former CEO (he was effectively regulating himself).

Well the Kidd's gone too.  One could say, this Kidd won't stay in the picture!  He'll be replaced by Paul Whiteing who is currently Director of Policy and Innovation at the unregulator.  Policy and Innovation?  They're meant to be a regulator for Christ sakes, not a bloody Web 2.0 start-up!  WTF do they have to innovate?

Check out the pictures of the board members sometime.  It's nice to see the board is comprised of a nice mix of middle aged white men and a couple of middle aged white women.  Who needs diversity anyways?  To be fair, it's probably middle aged white men that ring up adult chatlines and middle aged white women ringing up rigged premium rate competitions on Genetically Modified TV and Punch & Judy.

Just been reading The Inquirer, and it's good to know they're equally peeved with the premium rate shenanigans...

The INQ particularly likes the bit about an "apparent lack of non-premium rate contact information within the promotion of the service."

This is exactly what the INQ has campaigned against for years. Just you try getting your £1.50 premium rate text refund without spending more than that on calls to complain about the mis-selling.

It's also nice to see that luminaries working in the mobile content industry itself have been gradually phased out from Phonepayplus' board and committees. The last to go was Mblox's Andrew Bud who resigned at the beginning of September.

One INQ reader took fright when PPP's CEO, George Kidd, recently declared a potential conflict of interest. But it turns out he was just playing ultra-safe following criticism from the likes of the INQ and the conflict is purely academic.

Head. Nail. Hitting. The.

It is a long arduous task to get your money back and there's no guarantee you will. If you don't, you're on your own. PhonepayPlus can't help you. OFCOM can't. Trading Standards can't. The police can't. The service provider can't. Your phone network can't.

You can kick up a fuss though and after hours, days, weeks of creating negative publicity you get a few quid more than the numerous unsolicited messages and 0871 support calls cost you.  You then have the inconvenience of having to get to the bank to cash the cheque.  Shame they can't put the money back where they got it from, straight back to one's phone account! Don't forget, the scammer then has your home address, full name and your phone number.

As I have neither the time nor the will to look into all of mBlox's misdeeds I'll just focus on the ones involving Spread Media Limited.  Get in and buckle up...

Hey, look who's responsible!

The infraction back in September didn't, as far as I know, affect me.  It didn't seem to affect anyone by the looks of things.  Or did it?  Well no member of the public complained, but that's not the whole story...

Let's look at September 7th 2007 first (key points):

• A member of the Executive received an unsolicited text message
• they (the Executive member) had not at any time participated in a reverse billed SMS service and that the message had been totally unsolicited
• ...the breaches that had occurred, particularly illegality which is considered as always causing consumer harm...
• The information provider stated they had purchased the opt in list from a 3^rd party and that this party informed them that the mobile number in question had opted in when making a one-off payment for a ringtone/logo in January 2004. No other evidence was presented to support this
• INAPPROPRIATE PROMOTION: UPHELD
• The Executive believed the description of cost as “150p 2 rcv” was not a sufficiently clear format
• Despite no further messages being sent by the user to confirm details, two further chargeable messages were sent to the mobile phone number
• The Executive found that consumers were being charged for operational and instructional messages prior to accessing the service
• The Executive found that the promotional text message failed to display the identity of the information provider or their relevant contact details
• The information provider stated it had tightened its internal procedures, ensuring contact details are now included in marketing messages and ensuring all marketing messages have Director approval before they are sent out

The result was they got away with it (a formal reprimand and a £500 fine, I kid ye not!)  Why?  Because no member of the public made a complaint.  That's not to say no one got ripped off - folk probably knew it wasn't worth all the time and hassle to get a couple of quid back.  If you look at how many hours I've spent and I'm still out of pocket, can you blame people for not complaining?  It's kinda like when some money goes missing from a wallet or purse.  Maybe there's a couple of pounds in there, you leave it on the bar, turn around for a second and although it's still there, the coins have gone.  Do you report it to the Police?  No.  You know they can't/won't do anything, so what's the point wasting your time?  It's a small amount, you put it down to experience and then you move on.

Now let's look at June 19th 2008:

• “the Executive” received 90 complaints about a text chat promotion service, 17 of which formed the basis of its initial investigations.
• Complainants reported that they had received unsolicited chargeable promotional SMS messages
• The information provider confirmed that the service allowed for billed introductory chat messages to be sent at a cost of £1.50
• ...the information provider stated that it had bought a data list from an external supplier
• The Tribunal noted the high volume of consumer complaints (90 in total) which included the evidence of a former employee of the Executive and concluded that the information provider had failed to provide any satisfactory evidence of consumer consent to receive such messages
• Recipients of the unsolicited reverse billed SMS were misled as to the nature of the message
• The content of the messages was misleading.  They suggested that the recipient has been contacted following a referral from another person advising that the recipient was “a lot of fun”
• The Executive considered that the sending of unsolicited chargeable SMS took advantage of the inability of the consumer to block reverse-billed SMS
• operating a service in such a way that consumers were billed without their consent or knowledge, the information provider had taken unfair advantage of this circumstance
• The Tribunal concluded that the service had been promoted in a wholly inappropriate fashion.  It was a chat service which was sexual in nature, and had been promoted to a married man and to a business mobile phone, which had caused problems for both recipients
• The Tribunal’s initial assessment was that, overall, the breaches taken together were very serious
• The information provider appeared to have been reckless
• The service caused material consumer harm
• the Tribunal considered a previous case against the information provider in September 2007, in which the circumstances and breaches were markedly similar to this case. The Tribunal was particularly concerned that in this case the seriousness of the breach had escalated from that of the previous case, suggesting that the earlier formal reprimand and fine had either been ignored or had little impact.

Oh, there's way more and I could've been more concise but hey - there's only so many hours in the day!  So, what do you think readers?  If you were mBlox, would you have worked with Spread Media again?  Even the dodgy regulator stated the whole thing stunk.  Doesn't sound like mBlox cared, does it?

I apologise for any typos and formatting issues.  I just wanted to get this post out there ASAP.

I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping of late.  I've got all these thoughts swirling around my head.  My noggin is in overdrive!  The main thing I've been pondering in the last few days is why mBlox?  What kind of a stupid trucking name is that, rubber duck?

If any of my good readers know, and care to share, email me at the address at the top left.

Yeah, I got one of those dodgy messages too!

"I see you baby, shakin' that ass" sang some women on a Groove Armada track once.  Saw them at Brixton Academy a few years ago.  They were okay.  Actually, to be honest they were mediocre.  Talking of which...

How's my favourite client of yours?  And no, I don't mean TiVo!  That there is a great product I wouldn't mind paying for.  Shame they ditched the UK.  I'm putting you on notice TiVo.  Movin' on...

Drop us a line, this is beginning to feel like a one-way relationship.
Thanks,
Ant