13 posts tagged “david shepard”
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!
David Geoffrey Shepard (BA, BA hons) was born on the 20th of February 1970 in what was then a troubled Johannesburg. At some stage of his life 'G' (as he liked to be called by his chums) left South Africa, possibly when apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela took over. It was after he graduated from St Benedict's College in the affluent town of Bedfordview in 1987 anyway. No one knows for certain as it all happened in the last century - a time before computers and filling cabinets.
Update: Long lost documents have surfaced that can shed some light on those missing early years...
He went to a couple of universities in South Africa (1990-1998) before moving to the UK and continuing his studies at a community college in Oxford (2000-2001)
For more than a decade G has lived in the historic English city of Oxford. Whilst there he has philosophised, created art, designed webs and sent out (and charged for) a whole host of unsolicited adult content to those British folk silly enough to use mobile telephonical devices.
While David isn't building a vast business empire spanning numerous websites, online shops, ventures and logo designing, he has been busy giving back to the community with his tireless work for Oxford Brookes University (where he uses a computer or something).
As well as the good times, there have been hard times for David. But all throughout his friends and colleagues have been there to help him, to support him. One such fellow was Mark Henstone, he once worked with David at Spread Media but moved on to mBlox (where he is now a Strategic Account Man-jester or something) Unfortunately all the help in the world couldn't save huge swathes of G's online portfolio, with recent casualties including Spread Media, M-Pimp Limited (clearly pimping ain't easy) and Szassy Mobile.
No matter what ups and downs David has, he never loses sight of his true gift to the world, that being his art...
His work is reminiscent of what Claire, the chick on Six Feet Under slung together created whilst trying to impress her talentless peers and that creepy professor guy. One picture even reminds me of Mika Miro's later works (nah, just kidding - Joan Miro was talented!)
More will be written on David in the future, he is the man of the moment and there's still plenty to be said. In the meantime, sit back check out his art (click images for the full size) and finally David, it's over to you...
Philosopher, Artist, Web Designer, Silver Plaque Installer... A versatile copywriter and creative marketer accomplished in both print and web publishing... with wide-ranging experience in positions demanding high levels of interpersonal and verbal communication skills.
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...
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 3rd 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.
Upon their suggestion I rang them. I got nowhere. I emailed. Didn't get a reply. I'm in exactly the same position as last week and the week before.
I've wasted more time and effort and still haven't got my money back or had my questions answered. Most people would give up by now, it's only a few quid. Move on. Did that last time and look what happened!
mBlox keep telling me that they're just the provider of the numbers and transactions. That my beef is really with the service provider...
No mBlox, my beef is with YOU and YOUR CLIENT. That's right, both of you. You want to know why? Well let's have a look at who PhonepayPlus fingers...
mBlox are leaving me high and dry. They were foolish to continue doing business with David Shepard's Spread Media (aka Spread Mobile). Me? My culpability extends to being foolish enough to own a mobile phone and expect to only be billed for services which I've asked for.
mBlox, you're the world's largest mobile transaction network - right? Y'all seem to be doing well, no? You've taken a keen interest in my blog, so I'm guessing you don't like the bad publicity. Why don't you just give me my money back as a goodwill gesture (if for no other reason)? It amounts to less than £10! Seriously, we're talking a tiny amount.
Hmm...
I think I've hit on why they won't do that. They'll be opening the floodgates for others. I guess the games are going to continue then. BTW you do realise that your investors, clients, and potential partners are all dropping by here, don't you? They tend to be interested only in my posts about mBlox, nothing else.
You couldn't make this up. How bloody cheeky! Gotta hand it to the man though, it's a freaking awesome idea...
- Spam folk with premium rate texts priced at £1.50 a pop
- Keep doing it until they text back STOP ALL
- If you get caught and have wrist slapped, lay low for 6 months
- 6 months later spam same folk from a different number
- Make it difficult to get a refund and a straight answer
- Start up another premium rate text service, this time advertise it as a way to stop unsolicited crap. Charge £1.50 for the privilege
My favourite part is the following:
You can of course contact the companies that are calling you directly and ask them to remove you from their mailing list
I wish I could get hold of David, but no matter how hard I try I'm never able to.
Sometimes a picture speaks a million words - even a picture of words...
One of the good things about trialling phones is that you have a nice empty message box (at least, if you're like me and have never managed to sync anything properly!) Spam is far easier to spot a mile off. As you can see from the above I got a message from a five digit number - that's a giveaway sign that it's unlikely to be genuine. The other two message senders are my mate Gareth and 3Alerts alerting me that I'd reached my fair use limit (I plough on regardless now as they always send these no matter how much I've used).
And here's the message itself (just above, up there - yeah, there). There's no wording to suggest it's a promotional or premium message. Most people seeing that might think a real person had sent it to them. A horny bloke (no matter which way they swing - notice there's no reference to gender, clever that!) might even be tempted to reply...
Damn I wish I had money to burn and a phone number to waste (once your on their list...) as I'd love to know what would've happened if I'd replied. Would the message sender (Spread Media) have continued to pretend they were a real individual? Would they ever inform me it was £1.50 a pop?
If anyone has ever replied to one of these in error (I'll give you the benefit of the doubt) would you mind emailing me and telling me your story. I won't divulge your details and I won't make fun of you for falling for it (hey, you may have been drunk at the time...)
No word from my buds, be they Bud, David Shepard or, er, anything from PhonepayPlus, mBlox, or Hotwire PR.
A blog reader helped me out with a regular, landline, contact number for getting my money back: 01189241861 cheers Laura. She was a fellow victim. For what it's worth that's a Reading number and may also look like: 0118 924 1861 or 011 8924 1861 or 0118 924 18 61 - depending on where you see it. If one has been scammed from outside the UK it might look like this... +44 (0) 118 924 1861 or +44 (0) 118 9241861
Just making sure anyone else needing to Google this can find it. I'm not yet 100% sure if it's Spread Media's number, some number belonging to the company director David Shepard, or some 3rd party company that has been contracted out by him, a business partner of his or someone who I can't even think of right now. One thing I do know, they don't make themselves that easy to track down. These companies should have all their contact details available on PhonepayPlus, including a landline number and that landline number should have to be for the company and no outside call centre where they refuse to tell you anything about their client.
Sorry about the state of this post. I'm hungry and lunch has arrived!
That's not a typo, I meant SPANNER, 'cause that's what they are... tools! Oh, enough of my never ending wit already...
I would love to hear from those of you that have had a run in with PhonepayPlus/ICSTIS maybe even OFCOM or OFTEL, PayPal or PalPlus. Whatever they like to be called on a Tuesday! Crikey, it's Tuesday already!
Of equal interest to me and presumably the majority of the people reading my Fraudwatch posts (remember don't have nightmares, goodnight and good luck) are the perpertrators and enablers, the likes of mBlox and the Tanla's and Spread Media's of this world. Anyone got any stories about these less than savoury folk (oh I hate biting my tongue!)
The world (okay the UK) needs to hear your story, so please get in touch. I know you're reading as lots of people were checking out my latest Fraudwatch posts, from across the country - and they can't all be Andrew Bud (scroll to comments for a treat) or David Shepard.
BTW for those new to my blog, Andrew Bud's company is in cahoots with the scammers and he is also The Regulator - I'll be back... to steal your money!
If you don't know the quote from my 'title' above, then I'm probably going to sound a tad on the postal side of things. For those of you that that describes, let me put you at ease and say GO WATCH THAT MOVIE!
So, Ant, we get the title and we want to know what's grinding your gears. Please tell us!
You want to know what really grinds my gears? And, in no particular order, here's what:
- People making excuses for the unexcusable
- Getting nowhere when talking to customer services
- Being expected to pay a premium to call a company who rips you off and then profits from the call you've just placed to stop them ripping you off further
- Having to bite my tongue because I'm venting too much
- Wasting hours upon hours over this crap - but I'm so er, peeved that it's not about the money (they could give me 100x the amount back, I wouldn't give a crap* it's the principle and I want to make everyone aware about this issue)
- There's a bunch of other things but fudge it, I guys got to eat and before I do I think I need to make another call or two!
*Not entirely true, it would be quite nice but even if you made it 1000s - no wait - 10,000s it wouldn't stop me from bitching as I don't think anyone should get a penny stolen because companies and industry regulators aren't do the right thing/their job.
I've just received a letter from the company that overlooks premium rate phone services in the UK, PhonepayPlus. I say 'company' as that's what they are, they're not a Government regulator - no, they're a non-profit making company made up of the companies they regulate.
Now to the letter I received and why...
The main points in the above are:
- PhonepayPlus received 90 complaints
- Spread Media were found in breach of the Code of Practice
- The company were Fined £20,000
- 'A 6 month bar on premium rate services promoted by reverse billed SMS...'
- Those wishing to get their money back need to handover their full name and address as well as a copy of their phone bill to the fraudsters (contacting them either by premium rate phone number or by snail mail)
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand £20,000 isn't enough but on the other, other companies have gotten away with just £500 fines for similar breaches. The letter is a bit sketchy as regards to the details and how they came up with their conclusion as well as their fine. Instead they leave most of the juicy bits for the website HERE. It looks like Spread Media weren't the only shady company involved in this - I'll be delving deeper into this at a later date.
What exactly will the 6 month 'bar' mean to the company and the guy that runs it? Maybe he just needs to set up another company (he's had lots of practice). Where does it leave this little gem? That's way too funny and will need its own post!
Do PhonepayPlus really think it's a good idea for those of us scammed to hand over our full names, addresses and phone records to a company that clearly can't be trusted? It's bad enough they stole money from us, should we set up friends, family and colleagues for a future scam? And would you want to hand over your details to a man who's just lost £20,000 partly because of you? Yeah, I figured not!
Thinking out loud... there were 90 complainants - how many more were conned and:
- didn't realise it
- thought they'd subbed to the service when drunk
- thought their friends had subbed to the service for a laugh
- thought their kids had subbed to the service (and gave 'em a right rollicking over it)
- had no idea who to complain to
- sent STOP and couldn't be bothered to complain as they didn't have the time to chase it up?
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