It’s now 2017 and it seems that the old school style of text service scam is still prominent. To think that telcos are already vigilant in stopping these load theft services, one service is still prominent and shows up from time to time.
Last December 2016, one of our blogger friends Kaycee of www.kikaysikat.com posted a complaint about the same service that stole load for a service she didn’t subscribe to. As seen in the photos, SMS from 2151 shows the GAMEPAD Daily VIP Club is the name of their service. You will get a 1st text of you have been subscribed for the service along with your username (Globe Number) and password.
The service is free for 3 days, but on the 4th day you will be charged Php5.00 per day by availing the “Daily VIP Club”. Despite efforts of unsubscribing and getting a confirmation of unsubscription by Kaycee, you can see that she was again subscribed to the same service without any SMS enrollment.
Now the same thing happened to us just this January 7, 2017 10:26PM while driving at C5. There is no way I will subscribe to this kind of service and it’s impossible anyone else will as I am the only one who can use my phone and sim.
Plus why would I subscribe to a very OLD game platform which uses Java for games? It’s now 2017 where games can be easily downloaded from the Google Play store or Apple store for FREE!
Now we unsubscribed to the service immediately after driving, we will inform you the update / progress if we are once again subscribed or charged illegally by this service.
But upon checking Google, Facebook posts and even forums, it seems that the 2151 GAMEPAD service has been stealing load from customers since 2015.Here are some facebook public posts that we have seen complaining about the service, all are Globe subscribers as seen in their 1st 4 digit prefix.
Checking further the company “GAMEPAD” shows a very basic mobile website and a very outdated facebook page.
Update: We suggest you don’t go to the website as they have a phishing mechanism to know your mobile number. This is how we got the text when we were curious about gamepad when Kaycee Enerva shared her problem last December.
Complaints on their facebook page are all about the deduction of Php5.00 without any permission.
Their FB Page is outdated and last post was October 2015.
Forum phcorner.net also talks about this topic
Even Globe’s own community platform have tons of complaint about the 2151 Gamepad service and no official answer was given. Recent complaints in the Globe Community page are unanswered and left haning for months now.
A Gamepad representative is enrolled in the Globe community page only replies this
The usual reply of contacting the support team is the only answer they can give, this gives them additional time to burn and eventually get Php5.00 load from you before they address of unsubscribing you.
So far searching online there isn’t a solid solution seen or shared against this scam. Seems that this method is still on-going even after the holidays. For now, if you are a Globe subscriber do check your SMS as you may have been subscribed without knowing.
We will monitor this scam from time to time, I’ve been always careful where my load goes to and will always be. Scams from companies like this should be stopped, the heck it’s now 2017! We will try to contact our friends from Globe about this as well and see what they can do, in the meantime if you encounter the same please tell us so we can spread the word.
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