Mobile phone help please.

[Excalibur]

Mrs Excalibur has done a silly thing. She entered a competition to win heaven knows what by texting from her phone. She didn't ubderstand she could be charged for texts, and she didn't read the small print about how her prize will cost more to be delivered than it's worth.

She's on PAYG, and there are another three texts still to come. They're not here yet, cos her credit is too low for them to arrive. She doesn't want to top up her cvredit just to pay for these texts to wipe half of it out. Is there any way to bar these texts so they can't be delivered?

Phone is a little Nokia slide, one of the entry level jobbies. Thanks in advance.

[Spirits High]

Peter,

Does the competition have a website? Ie GMTV or ITV etc?

You'll find the competitions rules & regs on there somewhere and there should be some sort of "How to stop it" section.

Hope that helps as I don't know how to bar numbers on Nokias

[DJMaxG]

The usual procedure is sending a text (SMS) message with the word "STOP" to the number that you are receiving them from, in other words, reply to it with that.

I know its not the same, but I registered to Natwest moblile phone banking, the text message keeps coming through every friday, and I dont know how to stop it. I cant really remember all the passcodes etc for the phone banking, so Im going to leave it for now

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

It looks like Max may be right....<goes off for a lie down>

Read here Peter.

[DJMaxG]

It looks like Max may be right....<goes off for a lie down>

Arent I always just?

[Excalibur]

Thank you Max and Darren, very helpful.

Thanks as well Paul, as to the small print, I managed to spot the " Carriage Charge" for your prize, which is greater than the value of the prize!! I'm not sure I've got glasses powerful enough for the other bits.

It came on an entry form bundled with a catalogue she subscribes to, but denies any connection with them. I thought they'd got this sort of thing stopped years ago? She didn't realise that receiving texts can cost money, and thought she was having a free entry, since part of her package gives her free texts at weekends.

Last time she did it, she was trying to win a 7series BMW!! We allegedly won a mobile phone, but I haven't held my breath whilst awaiting its delivery.

[Solitaire Events Ltd]

Arent I always just?

Er, no.

[deltic]

are these text charged on delivery or just if you open them

[Excalibur]

are these text charged on delivery or just if you open them

Phone a friend? ed if I know, I don't do texts, I'm a Luddite.

Anyhow, I've sent STOP and STOP ALL. Let's see if that works. If not, the next one might be ER OFF.

[Paul S]

The text messages are charged on delivery regardless of whether or not they are opened. Unfortunately you wont be able to stop the ones that have already been sent, even though they have not yet been delivered they'll wait for the credit and then deliver.

There could possibly be a way round this, although I've not tested this (however I'll get my team on it in the morning), depending on the network there is a maximum validity time on the message server. For Orange it is 4 weeks, any messages not delivered after this time will remain not delivered and therefore, as the message is only charged on delivery it should mean that you are not charged. I should state that I'm a Testing Manager for Orange's Fraud & Revenue Assurance team, I'm sure you're not the first person to ask this so I'll investigate when I get in the office tomorrow. If there's no definitive answer then Peter, consider your query as a prompt to get this officially investigated!

Kind Regards

Paul