Several newsagents called me yesterday to advise on-going difficulties with their banks allowing money to be taken out for the Bill Express equipment. Any newsagent in this situation ought to understand that many others have now successfully stopped this and received refunds from their banks. The QNF and NANA have advice out with their members on handling this. The legal team behind the proposed class action has provided advice on this. There is no reason I can see for newsagents continuing to pay for this useless equipment.
I’m not sure if this is the right area but i’m not sure where else i can post this. I just recieved my latest Telstra bill from my line that catered for BXP/eftpos payments. Anyway instead of the usual line rental fee and a few calls on top of that which was around $50 a month this latest bill was for nearly $700.
I just rang Telstra to query it and they did all the tests on when and where the calls were made and apparently they we made on the Eftpos line on july 24th and in a 9 hour period there were 3015 calls made to two numbers!
After explaining all about the BXP fiasco they said that i was liable for the expenses even though i told them i hadn’t used the terminal for around 2 months. They advised me to get onto the administrators of BXP to explain the issue and see what they say there end. Has anyone else had the same issue?
Anyway i was just wondering if anyone could tell me who i could call to try work this out because Telstra were adament that i was liable for the costs. Is there also anywhere else i could take this higher because i just think it’s totally wrong that i have to fork out the money that is quite obviously a fault elsewhere.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I’ve just heard (here-say) that something has gone awry with another agent in Qld with a whopping phone bill being charged through that line.
Are you who I’ve heard about Steve?
What are the two phone numbers? Have you called them?
Also one more thing on the BillExp issue , ie the ANZ merchant facilities.
The only thing left I did not do is make a direct debit stop on ANZ merchant facilities on a different bank a/c.
So ANZ did a direct debit of $19.80 for the annual fee on 1st Sep08 even though we had spoken to them back in Jul08 about not wanting the facility and not to send us the alternate terminal. They did not request a written notice and no alternate terminal was sent out to us either.
Guess what the merchant service said: we cannot close down the facility ourselves bcos we do not own it but BillExp does!!!
They did say they will refund us the money back though.
So we shall see if this happens.
How can BillExp own the merchant facility if ANZ have been drawing money straight from our a/c anyway all this while?
believe we might have to approach the banking ombudsman after all to totally close down the facility rather than leaving it open-ended for future drawings.
Has anyone else formally shut down their ANZ merchant facility that was attached to the BillExp terminal?
No it wasn’t me Michael this is the first time i’ve mentioned it. The two numbers are that were being called pretty much similtaneously are 0198307189 and 0198307199. Telstra couldn’t even tell me who what or where the numbers are.
As you can see they aren’t really normal numbers and when i did call i got that sound like when you’re calling a fax. I’m not surprised that it’s happened to someone else as well and i’d be even less surprised that there’d be a few more it happened to as well. I’m just not exactly sure where i can take this to sort it out.
We’ll all have to keep a look out for this it seems. Probably BE’s last chance at grabbing our cash?
numbers that begin with 01 are nation numbers mostly used by dial up internet providers, you must have a piece of equipment that is dialing these numbers on your line
Scott,
The only thing that line is used for is my eftpos/BXP terminal. When i took out the terminal the phone point was sitting there idle and nothing else was plugged into it until last week when i got my new St George eftpos terminal connected to that same line.
I contacted the lawyer who we were refferred to in regards to the class action against BXP and he in turn has fired off an email to the administrators to see what he can do and find out what he can.
Steve, this is sounding more like an error on telstra’s part.
Scott, i thought exactly the same thing myself but Telstra ran line tests for faults etc and they were adamant that it wasn’t from their end which i guess i can only take their word for.
They said that those “calls” were made from the eftpos line i mentioned to those two numbers and they say it’s a fault of the equipment and therefore BXP’s problem. Obviously BXP can’t/won’t do anything about it which i repeatedly explained so they said all i can do is get onto the administrators of BXP and try work something out with them which i highly doubt i’ll be able to given the circumstances.
Basically telstra has washed their hands with it and said that i’m liable for the payment even though it wasn’t my fault in any way.
Steve, you dont happen to use optus for broadband do you?
No i don’t Scott. My internet (pacific) is run off a completely different phone line so i know it doesn’t have anything to do with my net connection. I actually wish it was then i could get to the source of the problem and they’d be able to fix it at their expense.
I just wondering if it is linked to when optus had a cable go down and most of Queensland had no broadband internet and a lot of stores with ANZ could not use eftpos
Sounds like it is trying to dial into the dialup internet service BXP provided
we had trouble with the phone as well.even though it was a dedicated bill express line ,”phone calls” were made out yet no hand phone was connected.this happened over several months untill we placed an outgoing bar on the line.apparently the equipment could make “out going phone calls”.these were made to local numbers though.
Hi,
I seem to recall when BXP first started up there were a few issues like this associated with some other agents. I am not 100% sure, but I think BXP were relaying terminal messages through various nominated terminals….I gather to reduce Telco rates…but the affect was a few agents initially had these massive phone bills until BXP started looking after the line rentals, etc….all part of how they set up their “string and tin can” network….hope this helps…I am a different Steve and have not had this problem, but I initially heard about it at a QNF branch meeting a few years ago.
Regards Steve A
Scott
The BE equipment communicated by broadband, but had a backup dial-up facility if the broadband connection was down. When the broadband was pulled, your modem dialed out to get end of day figures. Those 019 numbers are owned by BE.
Evidently, BE modems answered your modem, but failed to get EOD figures because their computers were shut down. Your modem retried repeatedly.
Obviously, BE owes you but the chances of re-imbursement are slim. The Telcos have a valid answered call recorded so they probably will not be interested in a refund. Optus generally will refund $50 if you can show your account is much larger than normal and you claim that some fault in your equipment caused the inflated account. I would appeal to Telstra, but I know they are pretty tough when the fault is not theirs. Good luck
Rick, do you know what this physically looks like so we all can remove it? – If it’s still there.
Michael
The dial-up modem is part of the ADSL Modem. The brand name on ours is Dlink.
Pull the power plug out and disconnect the cable to the telephone socket to be sure.
I was thinking last night, does anyone have the “black box” still connected and powered?
I guess i can consider myself lucky.
Same situation, but only 120 phonecalls and $20 out of pocket.
I had removed the BE user interface first, but not the rest of the equipment until some while later.
Phone bill shows a dialling frenzy to the same two numbers on 24th july between 3-6am.
Thanks, Steve, for blocking the lines with your 3015 calls, so that mine couldn’t connect more times!
when we first had BillExp, there was a dial-up connection which was explained to us being a back-up when the broadband is down.
On getting our first few telephone bills, we noticed the amount of unfamiliar dial-outs.
So we then decided to pull out the phone plug-in to avoid paying for these unrequired dial-outs.This removal has never been of issue to our normal billexp/ broadband/anz eftpos use.
We then gain an extra phoneline to use when required.
Am real glad now we didi what we did then.
We have successfully had all payments to BE stopped for a few months now. Our ANZ account manager did the right thing.
On the subject of the mysterious phone calls, we had that problem at the very start of our BE installation. While BE did not explain the calls, they did refund them (it continued for 3 months), but it has never happened on that line again. We are, however, keeping an eye on our phone bills.
Just received a monthly Merchant Rental and Fee bill from ANZ for the Bill Express EFTPOS. I rang them, first they said that it was a bill from Bill Express and they could not stop it. Then I spoke to a supervisor and same story! They claim that the bill comes from Bill Express and they cannot stop it until Bill Express tells them to! Watch your bank accounts for this debit!
is this the rental for the eftpos machines that got deliverd after BXP shut down ?
No, its for the ones used by the Bill Express program. The one that sits in a cardboard box in my shed and has been for months.
Hi Guys,
Bumped into conversation by mistake, hope you can help.
Lost money with Mobileeft.
Administrators will not return calls or answer email.
What can i do?
Patric, There is no money. Mark
Hi,
Has anyone received bill from TBI (BNY trust) after stopping the direct debit? what do you do with that?
Thanks.
HG,
Have you recieved an account fromTBI?
G’day
You could forward it to Hank, though it’s probabably not neccesary as he’s probably also recently become aware of ‘pepper home loans’ busy little mailing campaign.
That is of course if you have joined the NANA class action.
If you haven’t, it wouldn’t hurt to join; only one month rent.
I wouldn’t waste any of your time trying to wind up “pepper-opening-doors”;
just let all thier letters go off into the void to be un-acknowledged; i.e. treated with the disdain they deserve.
Hi,
Anyone know how to return their(TBI) equipment after stopping the direct debited? If not, of course they’ll keep ask for the rental fee.
You can’t return it, because no body knows who owns the crap.
Just leave it out the back of your shop till they sort out who owns it.
If you are receiving excessive calls on your phone bill to 0198 numbers, you should turn off the blue sonic wall devices -in some instances two were installed as part of the computer kit. One of them has a modem on board and dials up the backup system if the broadband is down
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the good news, I was first strung along by the administrators and then they went into hideing.
I had put in a claim for $17000 but it was just ignored.
St georges bank had a toe in this as they were raking in $20 a month for something
I rang them up and they did not know anything about it nor the ASIC, It seams that the big boys have run into thier rabbit holes.
Can someone give me some info about NANA class action or Hank Spiers email Address. Many thanks
Chris,
The action is on hold as a result of the collapse of Bill Express.
spierconsulting@netspeed.com.au
Mark
Can someone please offer me some advice?!
I’m a fulltime uni student, and I signed an agreement with “Dialtime” AKA “Bill Express” about 2 years ago on behalf of my mother (I was 17 years old, and didn’t read the contract and blindly signed away). Whilst we did not own a newsagency, we ran a small corner store. We were told by sales reps that we could return the terminals after 3 months if we were not happy. After 2 months, we actually sold our store and attempted to rescind the contract. Dialtime informed us that we could not do that, and attempted to debit $15,000 from our Bank account, for the rest of the “fees due”. They then sent people to collect the terminal from our house. We refused, and have subsequntly been paying the monthly fees every month (since it works out less than paying the whole $15,000 amount – which included termination fees, etc). My contract with them is nearly over, with my family paying nearly $4000 for a service that we do not even use.
They are still deducting this monthly amount from my account to my knowledge, and I have not received any information pertaining to the “bankruptcy” or “administration” of the company. They have not sent me anything in the mail, I have not received any calls from them since we sold our store in 2005.
Is Dialtime the same as Bill Express??
WHAT IS GOING ON? SOMEONE PLEASE EMAIL ME AND HELP?!
Angela,
Click on the Bill Express link kn the right of this page and read through the material there. There is plenty of coverage and comment about Bill Express which you should fine helpful including comments about the direct debit.
Mark
Angela, check with a lawyer, people under 18 cannot sign contracts.
To Angela & anyone else who still uses the same bank account:
It’s not as big a hassle as it looks to open another account & transfer all auto in/out payments to it, except bxp; then close the account.
the filthy vermin wanted 30,000 out of us. they haven’t had a cent, & won’t get any. The day they renegged on the deal was the day I stopped all payments to them.
Don’t pay them,
Join the class action,
You may be able to have the last few payments reversed.