Yes - they made a mistake and have now rectified the issue. I congratulate Telstra for doing the right thing

It was no "mistake" dumbell. They did the wrong thing and must now pay up.

Telstra is a beast with similarities to other members in it's family, it's aunty the ABC and now the less reliant CBA. They all have a culture of disdain for the general public. Now this is very odd because Telstra and the ABC have received $$$BILLIONS from taxpayers. One would wonder how such a culture developes over the years? Well it helps if you start by hiring people who dont have a liking for customer service, guarantee a constant and reliable cashflow from taxpayers, then you make the organisation accountable to only themselves. I think Telstra could recruit more shareholders if they demonstrated a more reliable, efficient and effective system of customer service. I have seen some improvement over the last 20 years but the offshoring of CS jobs was a move in the wrong direction in my opinion.

As far as I can see Telstra was well aware of the problem, admits it, and failed to address it even after a large number of customer complaints.

Note: Telstra had set the PDB as the default on customer’s phones and the system didn’t require any further “permissions” i.e. ‘allow’ or ID verification before services were billed.

Because Telstra failed to address the problem themselves … the ACCC commenced proceedings against Telstra on 26 March 2018.

From the ACCC, 26 March 2018

Background:

The ACCC and Telstra have agreed on the following facts to be presented to the Federal Court for its consideration:

• Since July 2013, Telstra has been operating its “Premium Direct Billing” (PDB). The service allows Telstra customers to purchase digital content from third-party developers that sell their content outside usual app marketplaces like Google Play or the App Store. Charges are automatically applied to Telstra customers’ pre-paid or post-paid mobile accounts.
• Telstra did not adequately inform customers it had set the PDB system as a default on customers’ mobile accounts and that if customers accessed content through the PDB service, even unintentionally, they would be billed directly by Telstra.
• Telstra was aware from early 2015 to at least June 2016, not least because it received a large number of calls disputing such charges, that the operation of the PDB service had led to a significant number of its customers unintentionally purchasing and being billed for PDB content subscriptions without their knowledge or consent. The number of affected customers was in the order of tens of thousands and possibly in excess of 100,000.
• Telstra failed to implement the identity verification safeguards for the PDB service which it used for other third party subscription services to authorise the charges (such as the customer entering a PIN or signing into an account).
• Telstra was aware that family members such as children were at risk of inadvertently subscribing on a family member’s phone.
• Until October 2017 Telstra had earned about $61.7m in net revenue from commissions on premium billing services charged to more than 2.7 million mobile numbers.

Source: https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/telstra-misled-customers-over-premium-billing-charges

I’ve always hated Telstra. Back in the days when they had a monopoly they ripped off everyone bigtime!!! Telstra has always been a greedy corporation with many sneaky ways to suck money from their customers and it does not surprise me in the least that they sourced yet another way to do precisely that!