The Phone Paid Services Consumer Group was created to apply pressure to the authorities and the regulator to put a stop to scam operators who were abusing the system.
Thankfully, the scams have now all but stopped. The regulator, the Phone-paid Services Authority has been disbanded with effect from 1st February 2025. We’re going to leave this website up for the moment, as a reminder of the abysmal history of Phone-paid Services and as a reminder of how bad things were. Ofcom will now be directly responsible for the regulation of these services and it is to be hoped that they will replicate the success of the Phone-paid Services Authority in stamping out the scams. We can still be contacted via this website, but most of the contents are now of historic interest and should not be relied on.
If you’ve been scammed by a Phone-paid Service (a service which makes a direct charge to your phone bill) we remain interested. Please contact us through this website and we’ll do our best to help and advise.
Although “Payforit” is no more, the scams continue. Changes to the regulations have dramatically reduced the incidence of fraudulent charges on most networks, but at the time of writing the Three network contiues to be plagued by them. In the past, attempts to stop the scams have had a short term effect, but the scammers have just become more devious in finding ways to circumvent the rules. We fully expect the same to happen again. The regulator is slow to react to new potential exploits, and we hope that this consumer group can act to pressure them into taking fraud prevention more seriously.
The Payforitsucks website will continue to operate for the next few months with a continued emphasis on helping consumers resolve individual disputes. This website will concentrate on regulatory issues, and in particular the PSA consultation on Code 15.
Our principal aim in the past few years has been to support consumers, who are often taken aback to find that their phone accounts are vulnerable to these charges. The volume of work has now reduced to the level where it becomes possible to expend energy in fighting for fairer system, so that the incidence of these scams becomes rare. We want to collate consumer views and give them a voice. For years, the regulator, the Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA) have ignored the views of consumers and allowed dodgy companies to operate “services” of dubious legality. Even where services have stayed within the law, they have often employed sharp practice to trick consumers into “subscriptions” which they would never have signed up for if they had known the true cost.
We want to make sure that the regulator properly considers the views of consumers in regulating Phone-paid Services by making sure that those views are difficult to ignore.
