Watchdog to splat Crazy Frog

THE Department of Trade and Industry will today unveil plans to increase fines on telephone rip-offs from £100,000 to £250,000. The move comes amid growing evidence that ring-tone companies are trying to dupe youngsters into running up heavy mobile phone bills.

This is Money has already reported on numerous instances of families being stung to the tune of hundreds of pounds after their young teenaged children inadvertently signed up for regular monthly payments instead of 'buying' a simple ring-tone as they had thought.

Yesterday telecom watchdogs said they were investigating whether the companies behind the Crazy Frog phenomenon were involved in the practice after claims that young mobile phone users had allegedly incurred huge bills.

Advertising by Jamster is being studied to see if they effectively fooled children into signing up for an expensive mobile phone service. Industry regulator ICSTIS is looking to see whether the service was deliberately targeting under 16s, as they are deemed least likely to understand the nature of the contract to which they were signing up.

Many parents have complained how their children were unaware of what their children were signing up to. One mother from south-west London, who asked not to be identified, told This is Money: 'My daughter got a new mobile phone to go to secondary school because she has quite a long walk to the other side of town. Many of her friends got new mobiles too. They're all downloading these ringtones.

'None of us realised anything was amiss until the bill arrived and we found all these charges on it. We've even been fobbed off when we tried to cancel the subscription and we're still waiting, three months later, for money to be refunded. I have rung and rung their helpline but they seem incapable of helping us sort this out. I think it's disgraceful. It's nothing short of a rip-off.'

Jamster spent more than £10million running advertisements for the Crazy Frog ringtone in virtually every TV commercial break for days on end. The campaign was hugely successful and also helped send the related Axel F track to number one in the charts for three weeks.

But the ploy had a sting in the tail - the downloading process also involved signing up for other services from Jamster and customers found that a succession of texts and ringtones were sent to their phones at a charge of £3 a time. Jamster has been generating huge profits by effectively picking the pockets of its young clients, it is claimed.

The premium rate telephone line watchdog, ICSTIS, has received 110 complaints about the service, but these are thought to be just the tip of the iceberg.

ICSTIS spokesman Catherine Bell said: 'We are looking at whether people-are aware they are signing up for a chargeable subscription service and if they know how much they will be paying and how often.'

mBlox, Jamster's telephone service provider, said all its clients are warned about ICSTIS codes of practice. Jamster said: 'The 110 complaints is a very small proportion of our active users but we take any complaint seriously. We do everything we can to comply with the industry codes and we don't actively target under 16s.'