Premium rate services are offered by third party companies for services such as Television quizzes, game shows, competitions or TV voting. Ringtones and wallpapers. Horoscopes or psychic services.
As the name suggests, these are “premium” services, meaning they come with an additional cost. To use them, you’ll need to have sufficient credit in your My48 account, as these services are not included in your monthly plan allowance.
Premium service supported by 48:
Premium Calls - Premium rate phone lines generally operate on 15XX numbers. Calls to premium rate services cost more than standard calls.
Premium SMS - Premium rate text services are texts to and from five-digit short code numbers (e.g. 53XXX or 57XXX). Sending a text to a premium rate service will cost more than a standard text. It is important to note you will also be charged for receiving these texts.
To view the most up to date charging for both premium rate calls and SMS see rates
The cost varies depending on the service you’ve engage with. Each premium service provider sets their own rates, and these will be higher than standard SMS changes. For a full breakdown of charges for premium rate services, see here
You will need to have an additional credit balance on your My48 account and the charge incurred will be then be deducted from your available credit balance.
ComReg (Commission for Communications Regulation) has a useful tool on their website that lets you easily check unknown names or numbers to see if they're linked to a premium rate service. For more info see here
For refund enquiries, you’ll need to engage directly with the premium service provider. Contact details for Premium Rate services providers are available on Comreg (Commission for Communications Regulation) Service Checker, which can be accessed here
To stop a service, send the word “STOP” to the short code from which you are receiving messages. Your will receive a confirmation of the cancellation, and be opted out.
I don’t want to engage with Premium SMS service, can I block them?
48 customers can request to block incoming premium texts via our Care team. Please note that this feature does not block premium calls. If you’d like to enable this option then please reach out to our Care team during open hours here