Problems with Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage and Rogers 3rd Party Billing

Update 09-17-12: 

Got this update from Joanna with a link to some good news! It appears that everything we all have guessed about (that the carriers are making money off of these 3rd party companies) seems to be true. Hopefully the media focus and cost of the lawsuit will put all  nonsense to an end. Thanks for the link Joanna!

"Joanna has left a new comment on your post "Problems with Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage and ...": 

Hi everyone: Good news! Hoping this will prevent other cell phone user to go thru what we've gone thru! 
http://www.competitionbureau.gc.ca/eic/site/cb-bc.nsf/eng/03499.html
Also, just a quick update since my last posting on Aug 13. I've got email confirmation from Buongiorno for a full refund BUT I've yet to believe it until I ACTUALLY see it in my account. I choose to believe that we are in a different billing cycle and so it could take couple of months to see the full credit."



Update: I found an article on line that perfectly describes what they are doing, it is called "cramming". They take advantage of a loophole in LEC (Local Exchange Carrier) billing, and need only your phone number to start charging you money. I fail to see what service could be so valuable that this is enabled by default, allowing virtually anyone to charge you if they have your mobile number. Give it a read.


Recently I have spotted an anomaly on my cell phone bill that has gone unchecked for over 3 months.

3rd Party Billing: As it appears on my phone bill. Notice the small print.

Unbeknownst to me, I had purchased a 3rd party service that has a recurring monthly charge of $9.99. The only evidence that I have at all regarding this service are 3 SMS messages (no bill or paper) stating that I am enrolled in this service. I had absolutely no idea how this happened.

Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage SMS Message: The ONLY notification you get that you are subscribed to something. 

So I went on a little adventure to find out how this happened, what I could do about the charges and how to prevent this from happening in the future.

How it happened:

The first thing I did was to check out the website to see what this 'service' is, and the first site I found about this company was a complaint site called 'Gripevine' which completely outranked the business itself on Google, so I knew it wasn't looking good for me.

I decided that I would poke around the Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage site to find out what it was. I wasn't really surprised at what I found, which were basically really low quality games:

Counting Sheep: Even the creators of these games find them so boring they can guarantee you will fall asleep playing them. 

Arcade Pong: Ah yes... the age old game of bouncing a ball on a paddle, only virtualized. Amazing.

Drop Flowers: Dropping flowers has never been so much fun! </sarcasm>  

Fat Girl: Aside from being completely offensive, apparently it is fun to guide something into a ring. 

Pumpkin Land: Doesn't appear to have pumpkins, nor is it a land. You lamely guide your finger up the platforms. Sounds super fun! 

Sheila Dressup: Believe it or not, there are like 5 of these, all the same, different girls possibly different accessories. Ultra lame. 

As you can see from the above pictures that the quality of the games is terrible and remind me of the games you would see when you had to use a WAP browser to get to the internet on phones. Most of the games are fundamentally the same, just with different back grounds and pictures. It does not look like much time was spent at all putting the site up or making the games, as if it is just a place holder. Why on earth would I, my wife, or anyone want to pay $9.99/month for basically the same game with different pictures especially when we are in the smart phone era with tons of high quality $0.99 or free games?

It seems to me that someone needed to make a placeholder/front for their service so that if there were any litigation over it's billing practices that they could say that they had offered them a service.

It is my opinion that this is a 'shady' service that is clearly preying on human behaviour:

• People don't seriously check their messages: So if you were not paying attention (which is my case), and don't see that slick little SMS message pop in to say that you are subscribed you are raking in $9.99/month/person until they realize they are being scammed. 
• People never check their bills: Most people don't, or the people I know. And it took us 3 months to find it on ours. So again... they are getting the $9.99/month/person * the amount of months it takes to realize that there is an incorrect charge on their bill. 

If you have no ethics or morals this is a great business model, especially at $9.99/month. Even if they did provide some form of a refund to people that call in to complain, they most likely will not give up 100% of the money that they obtained. So they are essentially printing their own money, and I think they know it.

So now that I know who I am dealing with, I needed to back track to find out how I could have possibly subscribed to it, checking such things as: 

• Browser History. 
• SMS History. 
• Apps that might contain an Ad that my kids could have clicked on. 

But despite spending hours going through all of that, I could not find anything anywhere that would indicate how I provided permission for this unknown company to start charging me $9.99 per month to my cell phone bill.

What I could do about the charges:

If you want to save some time reading here is a summary, not much, but I will go through the thought process that probably everyone goes through when being ripped off.

It starts out by being completely irate, then it proceeds to be a call to Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage as per the SMS message to find out why we are being charged and to demand a refund followed by a call to Rogers to ask how this happened.

Call to Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage:

To my surprise, the Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage customer service didn't seem to be all that terrible, but then how can you be if you are customer service. Though they didn't seem to listen to any of the 'gripes' we had about this service just appearing on our bill (which is probably the only reason they get calls, so routine), they did 'say' that they would refund some of the money, though I have yet to see that.

The only thing that was consistently said on the phone by the customer service representative was that 'we subscribed', though they could not tell us how that happened. They also mentioned that we were notified by SMS and could have cancelled anytime, as if that is a valid excuse for being charged for a service that I did not know or want.

So after some back and forth and on the promise of a refund, we had hung up with them hoping that at some point in the future we would see a credit to the bill, though I am completely skeptical of this happening.

Call to Rogers:

The customer service experience on the call into ROGERS was not all that good. The person that I had on the phone I could barely hear, as if they were in some sort of empty room on a terrible phone, far far away from the microphone.

So after getting through all the security questions, we get into the reason for my call and I explained to the CSR that I found a charge on my bill that I did not agree to and that I want a refund for the charges. After being put on hold for a while, the CSR came back and rather quickly told me that this is a 3rd party charge and I would have to contact the 3rd party to get a refund for the charges.

I then ask the CSR, how is it that they are able to charge my account directly? I went on to explain that I had never received any information on this service and that I had never explicitly authorized another charge on my account. I was again put on hold and then the CSR just came back with the same answer, that I must have signed up for something somehow and that they cannot do anything about the charges.

I then asked a series of other questions, where the CSR had started to put me on hold for gradually increasing amounts of time until I finally asked if I could speak with a supervisor. I was put on hold again only to find that I was subsequently passed into another hold queue, a french language one. Eventually it was picked up again, but it was as if they couldn't hear me and the call was ended.

My wife didn't fair much better when calling in to discuss the same issue, she was just told that they had blocked 3rd party billing.

Neither of us were happy with the customer service we were receiving, especially since all CSRs are implying that:

• We willfully subscribed to the service. 
• There is nothing they can do about 3rd party services. 
• That the disabling of 3rd party services might somehow affect our ability to use our phone. 

How to prevent this from happening in the future:

To make a long story short, the only thing you could do at this point is opt-out of 3rd party billing. This means that you have to actually know what 3rd party billing is, then call into Rogers to have it blocked.

After my miserable experience with the phone based customer support, I did try hitting twitter and found that I got a much faster, and better experience by tweeting @RogersHelps, I would recommend going to them. The gents that helped me were knowledgeable, very helpful, but eventually gave me the same answer as the phone CSRs did. They did provide this useful link which is great for understanding what 3rd party billing is and Rogers stance on it:

http://redboard.rogers.com/2011/rogers-offers-premium-sms-choices-for-customers/

The article describes what happened to me as a 'feature' that is now available to Rogers that they call 'Premium SMS choices'. Here is the descriptive paragraph out of the article:

Premium SMS messages often charge an additional fee above standard text messaging costs. The costs usually range from $1 to $10. You can subscribe to a premium SMS service online by inputting your mobile phone number or by texting a specific short code (usually four or five digits). This could include submitting your mobile number on online contests, to win a tablet for example. Always read the terms and conditions before submitting your mobile number online. Regardless of whether a subscription is initiated online or through a mobile device, there is always a two-step activation process. This includes inputting your number online or through your mobile device and sending a confirmation ‘YES’ text to complete the subscription. Once confirmed, you are then charged for the messages until you ask them to stop.

Sounds good, but this never happened to me, there was no text out to subscribe to anything. Nor was there a confirmation SMS saying 'Yes' please bill me $9.99/month. The above paragraph is exactly what SHOULD happen... I ask for the service and I confirm that I want to be billed for it. Clearly there is a loophole to this that allows people to bill my account without this 2-step process and that is what needs to be addressed. I am not clear on how this company slipped through the cracks, or how many companies like this there are.

What I think Rogers needs to do:

The safeguards described in the article are good, I never got the chance to see if any of them work however. But what I think they need to do to improve customer experience is: 

1. Refund all accidental 3rd party charges to Rogers customers: This would obviously be within reason, but for people that have 1 or 2 charges on their account, not knowing what the service is, Rogers should go to bat for them. They have the clout (being a huge carrier) to claw back wrongfully taken funds from their customers. I wager that if they looked across many of the accounts they would see these sort of charges occurring and could proactively do something about it. It is much harder for each individual to get their money back than it would be for Rogers to get the money back for them. 3rd Party providers should have proof that we subscribed knowingly, if that ever comes into question.
2. For any charges above regular phone usage: Anything that Rogers does not provide should be highlighted and very visible to customers. If there is a 3rd party charge, then it should be easy to find, maybe accompanied with a Rogers SMS message or some other form of notification to make the people that don't check their bills or don't see the fine print aware of these extra charges. 
3. Block 3rd Party charges by default: Take it from 2 steps to 3 steps. Rather than subscribe to something directly, start by SMSing the customer and asking if they would like to 'enable' 3rd party billing. This way they could determine what it is before charges are laid. If they already know what it is and are intent on it, they will respond with a yes. For the ones that no one knows about, there can be no charges until it is enabled, so it can't be done by accident without explicit permission from the subscriber first. 
4. Proactively scan and resolve 'scams': Periodically look at all the 3rd party charges being applied to Rogers accounts. If there is a higher than normal subscription rate (perhaps like Buongiorno Gamifive Mobivillage) investigate and determine if subscribers were legitimately subscribed or not. If you blocked 3rd party charges by default it would be less work as the subscribers that enabled 3rd party billing would be susceptible to bad billing practices. 

Is RIM beyond hope?

It's been a while since I had written a post on RIM and thought that it is about time, given that I have some sort of fixation on them having to use them in my daily life. Anyone who has been watching the news recently knows that the company's stock has slid 5% down to $13.65 yesterday, now 75% lower than just 12 months ago, so things aren't going well and like me, everyone is sitting around waiting for RIM's last hurrah when the Blackberry OS10 devices come out.

RIM is in a terrible position right now and I don't at all envy Thorsten Hein's position having all the pressure to do something to try and salvage what is left of RIMs business. The only good news that we are seeing is that he and perhaps the board are starting to see the big picture and do something about it, only that it may be too late.

I think they have done good by:

• Removing Jim Ballsillie: This might be more symbolic than anything. But since he had been put into the role of CEO and both Mike Lazaridis and Jim Ballsillie landed softly into board rolls Thorsten has never been able to shake the stigma that he is just the puppet of the two former co-CEOs. Initially that's all that it looked like, he came in trumpetting their approach acting like there is nothing wrong, but by getting rid of Ballsillie (not sure about Mr. Lazaridis), they are giving us a sign that he can no longer contribute to the direction of the company and that he really does want things to change.
• Removing top exectutives: David Yach and chief operating officer Jim Rowan were let go as well as other high level staff. THE PROBLEM IS: While you are getting rid of the 'old' mentality you are going to have to replace them with new bodies. It may prove to be difficult to fill all these high level positions in a short time considering their big turnaround HAS to happen this year.
• Admitting the difficulties that RIM is facing: It is about time that someone flat out said what was going on with the company. Jim & Mike were always trying to put a spin on the reasons that RIM was faltering and trying to evangelize their plans for a turn around even though it would never materialize. This will give investors and your average person more confidence in a CEO that admits there is a problem rather than living in a time bubble back when everything was still good. 
• Developing mobile fusion: I was skeptical of this from the start because I thought this would almost definitely cannibalize the sale of their blackberry devices. But since most people are now opting for Android and iOS devices nowadays, I am fairly confident that at some point in the future there will be no blackberry hardware. Mobile Fusion is putting the focus on their back end infrastructure and what is rapidly becoming their most important asset. 
• Putting a sale of the company or its assets on the table: Old co-CEOs would have only mentioned that they were open to licensing the blackberry OS, as if anyone would want anything to do with what is behind the demise of the company. Putting all the options on the table is good news because it leaves the possibility of a sale out there that could help with investment and also confidence that no option is off the table. THE PROBLEM IS: RIM might be too far gone to be sold, given that it has lost nearly all of it's value. The only thing left that I believe could be purchased is their patents and their back end infrastructure.

What I don't think they have done well:

• Communicate their direction & message well: Thorsten doesn't seem to be able to communicate direction or if they really pulling out of the consumer market. I have always thought that if they were having issues that they should focus on their core business and try and fix that the consumer part of their business seems to have made them scatterbrained so that they lose focus and what they should prioritize (Playbook, Storm, Torch). THE PROBLEM IS: The consumerization of IT is already in full swing, no one wants to carry 2 devices anymore and want their 1 perfectly capable phone to do everything. They do sort of have their bases covered with Mobile Fusion, but their hardware business is pretty much finished in my opinion.
• What about the blackberry ecosystem? We don't know what is going happen to BBM or the integration they were speaking of when making deals with the recording industry for Blackberry music. What will happen to all the money invested in music deals for the blackberry music?  
• Bad publicity: On top of the drunken executives that forced an emergency landing, there was a stabbing at a promotional concert for BBM which seems to have overshadowed the event itself, just like the drunken executives did.
• Provide message of hope to developers: I am not sure that I have seen any indication in news or otherwise that developing for Blackberry is going to be worth your while. I am seeing that developers will get a free BB10 device, but I don't see them providing any guarantees that they will be handsomely rewarded for developing on a platform that has every indication of failing at some point in time. They should be offering nearly 100% profit for the apps and other incentives to catch developer interest, everyone knows that if you want to make money you develop for iOS and Android, but they need a really good reason to develop for blackberry now.
• Trying to market an old OS: When they knew they would not be able to ship the BB10 devices on time they decided to drop some money on advertising BB7.  Anyone who has seen any of the ads can only see improvements in providing: Mobile Hotspot (which will be promptly shutoff by most IT policies in addition to WiFi), NFC (no one uses this for payment yet, for now is just a buzz word), WiFi Calling (this is just software, most likely it is provided by carriers, but other apps like Nimbuzz had it since at least 2009), FM Radio (nice to have, but virtually no one uses it), AutoSuggest (Not that I have seen it, but it is most likely tied into google somehow). There really is nothing compelling me to buy a BB7 device, especially since there is no guarantee that my BB7 device can run BB10 when it eventually comes out. You do have to sell the devices, that is a given, but I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that BB7 is a major revolution in the OS... since in my opinion we haven't seen that yet at all (BB2 - BB7, the only things I have seen as improvements are music, camera, expandable memory and some apps. The OS is fundamentally the same... the only real big change I remember is going from a C based OS to a Java based OS). 

I honestly think that for the most part, RIM is beyond salvaging in it's current form as it is too late to catch up with other hardware makers. No one will honestly want to purchase a BB10 version 1.0 phone with no applications when you can get a fully featured Android or iOS device, you would deliberately be committing  yourself to issues similar to those that occurred with the Playbook and OS updates/fixes. So that being said, this is how I see the future of RIM:

•  RIM gets purchased outright: I can see either Amazon (because Jeff Bezos seems to love RIM) or Microsoft purchasing RIM. Amazon has the kindle, kindle fire to tie into their ecosystem, but they do not have a phone. They could use RIM to break into the enterprise and also to manufacture Android phones to fit the hardware that they are missing when compared to Apple/Google. Microsoft could purchase them just to deepen their foothold in the enterprise and lock down Windows Phone 7 as the only enterprise capable phone (probably getting rid of Mobile Fusion save for Windows Phones). Windows Phone 7 definitely needs some sort of edge in hopes of catching up to Android and iOS, so anything could help.
• RIM leaves the hardward business and focuses entirely on enterprise software: They are already well positioned to do this with Blackberry Mobile Fusion, so they could pool there resources around owning Enterprise Device Management and E-Mail. To this day there is still no device that does e-mail better, so if they can enable this on Android & iOS phones (like they did with the PalmTreo650) then they would own that space. Good technologies is attempting to take ownership of this space, so they would be their biggest competitor. RIM could then live off the licensing fees of Mobile Fusion and look for other areas where they could add value.
• RIM switches to Android: I am not entirely sure on this, but it is possible that if BB10 is a complete flop, that it would be far less expensive for them to become an Android handset maker in addition to being an enterprise device management leader. So if you can't get the developers to come to you, you can go to Android where the developers are and continue to make money on handsets as well as licensing. Mobile fusion would then theoretically allow them to do this almost seamlessly as they are trying to address the BYOD movement with the software already. 

I don't really see too many options beyond these, and time is of the essence for the sale of the company as it has lost so much of it's value it may not be worth selling. I do think they can succeed as an enterprise software provider and I fully expect them to do something like this if BB10 turns out to be a complete flop.

I wish them the best, I really do. I don't hate them, I just hate the OS and it's lack of functionality. I will be watching their developer conference with interest (to get an idea of what BB10 is like and its functionality). Come November, if we are not blown away by the new devices and software I can see one of the above scenarios playing itself out.