PhonepayPlus’ Code of Practice has strict rules about services that could be attractive to children, particularly about how they are promoted and how much they cost.
For example, the Code states that children’s services must not cost more than £3, or in the case of subscription services, more than £3 a month. Our routine monitoring identified a service we thought broke these rules. At the same time, we started to receive consumer complaints related to the service. We increased our monitoring of the service and this intelligence was later used as critical evidence in our investigation. The service we identified was called ‘Club Penguin Cheats’, which provided hints, tips and cheats for video games. The service was promoted on a website and was operating on two mobile shortcodes.
‘Club Penguin’ is a legitimate social gaming site run by Disney, with a range of colourful cartoon penguins attractive to children. ‘Club Penguin Cheats’ had no association with Disney, but used very similar imagery.
Our monitoring showed that the top result of a Google search for ‘Club Penguin Cheats’ was a sponsored advertisement for the website that the service was promoted on. The subscription-based service was promoted as costing “£4.5 per week”. In order to subscribe, users were required to send a keyword to a specified shortcode. When PhonepayPlus accessed the website directly (not via the sponsored advertisement), the same ‘Club Penguin Cheats’ promotion was located. However, this service operated on a different shortcode and cost “£2 every 4 days”.
Complainants reported that their children were receiving text messages from the service, that in some cases they were unsolicited, that there had been misunderstanding as to the cost of the service and that, on some occasions, it had not been possible to stop the service.
Due to the serious issues identified, we asked the provider to immediately suspend ‘Club Penguin Cheats’ and all other similar services until further notice. The provider confirmed that it had suspended these services.
Subsequent monitoring of the service found it was promoting a subscription service for cheats for various ‘Poke Môn’ games, also costing £4.50 per week. PhonepayPlus considered the ‘Poke Môn’ service to be aimed at and attractive to children, thus operating in contravention of our original instructions to suspend all similar services. The provider suspended that and other similar services following further direction from PhonepayPlus.
When the case was brought to adjudication, evidence brought before the independent Tribunal included screenshots of websites with pricing information recorded by PhonepayPlus during its monitoring. The Tribunal made the decision to fine the provider £50,000 and ordered it to refund all complainants. |
The Tribunal made the decision to fine the provider £50,000 and ordered it to refund all complainants.
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