People making calls from our line...

Juk · 20-03-2008, 22:20

Sorry for the essay but this is really complicated and extremely stressful.

We have been good customers of Telewest/Virgin Media for over ten years. We have never faulted a payment and never had any serious problems with our phone line, internet or T.V. packages.

On 26th January 2008 an Engineer from Virgin Media came out to repair a fault on our phone line (the line went dead for some reason on the 19th January) and since that exact date unknown mobile numbers started appearing on our telephone bill. Calls were being made to Yemen and Saudi Arabia which came to £147 on the phone bill. These calls were not made by us and only started on the date the engineer had came. Over the past our monthly bills for telephone calls have been around £20, with about 20-30 calls made – this bill had almost 250 made. We had also been receiving random phone calls from people we did not know saying our number had phoned them, sometimes at ridiculous hours like 2 a.m.

Another engineer came out from Virgin Media to check the physical line (green box outside house) and said there was NO problem on the line!

We asked for an investigation by Virgin Media and this was escalated to the fraud department. We also asked for a total call barring to go on the phone line to try and stop these hacked phone calls being made from our line. The current bill is totalling another £100 already. We were not told how to activate this call barring plus we had to wait a further 24 hours for it to be on our account as the previous advisor put a ban to premium rate numbers only on the account which needed 24 hours to remove. It was finally active on Thursday 28th February this is logged on the computer.

On the 2nd March we were very shocked and disturbed to receive another call from an unknown person who had received a call from OUR number which he obviously would not recognise. We did not phone this person. We rang Virgin Media immediately to see what had happened to the call barring; they said it was still active. We asked how someone could get around the call barring as only my mother knows the PIN number and hasn’t shared it anyone. The advisor this time was totally unhelpful and wasn’t the least bit interested.

So our account is still being charged for these calls we are not making.

We have gathered written evidence of our clocking-in records from the workplaces of all of us to prove we were out when some of these calls were being made.

We were put on soft disconnect about 2 weeks ago, no TV, no Internet and no usage of the calls - but they carried on (bill is now around £600).

Today we were told by the Fraud Department that this was NOT a case of illegal fraudulent use, which leaves us all destroyed.

We got back intouch with customer services and the woman my mother spoke to sounded very helpful and checked our records, we've NEVER even dialed a bloody international number in 10 years!!

Basically, 10+ years of fine service,
26th January Engineer comes to "fix" line,
huge amount of calls from that date,
2nd engineer came out to check line and said there was NO crossed wire or anything,
fraud squad says it's not hacked or illegal usage...

Does ANYONE have the slightest idea of what could of gone on? How/What could that engineer of done to us to make this happen? Is there anything that could of gone wrong with the lines on virgins end?

moaningmags · 21-03-2008, 03:22

I'd ask Vm to explain why calls (that you didn't make) were allowed to connect during the period of soft disconnect. That in itself shows there is a problem. I'd also write to
Complaints,
Virgin Media,
PO Box 333,
Matrix Court,
Swansea.
SA7 9ZJ

Or you can fill out a complaint form here
https://help2.virginmedia.com/assets...intformCZ.html

and submit it.

I'd probably do both. If you get nowhere contact Watchdog or someone similar.

Juk · 21-03-2008, 10:18

Thanks for the response.

The woman at the fraud department told my mom that even though we were on soft disconnect some switch wasn't actually turned off or something meaning it wasn't 100% conclusive that we couldn't make the calls... it's a shambles.

I filled out that complaint form - thank you for that.

Juk · 27-03-2008, 19:35

Update:

Net is back temporarily.

Case has been passed to head office.

Our billings contact we have in Virgin (Becky something) said the case is the talk of the call centre and is being looked into thoroughly.

She said she's never known of something like this happening (calls getting through soft disconnect + risk barring) and the evidence is stacking in our favour. Good news finally!

moaningmags · 27-03-2008, 23:59

The best of luck and nice to hear they are taking it seriously.

Juk · 07-04-2008, 10:13

Okay another update.

4th April we had another engineer come out to test the green box / white box outside our house - both were fine with no crossed wire which we told them already.

He did however confirm we couldn't make calls from this line and I told him we're on risk bar / soft disconnect. He even asked me if we wanted the line turned back on to make outgoing calls - which I declined until this investigation/mess is over.

Now today I just got off the phone with a debt collection agency calling on behalf of Virgin Media! Credit Solutions is the name, I asked them if they knew this was still being investigated and the useless woman on the phone said that's irrelevant and the account owner needs to phone back today.

I'm appalled by this treatment we are receiving for something we're clearly not doing! (The calls CARRIED ON whilst we've been on risk bar / soft disconnect!!!!) But they seem to be dragging their feet due to not knowing wtf is going on.

I have no idea who we can turn to but this definitely isn't fair.

lostandconfused · 07-04-2008, 10:48

You said in a previous post, it had been sent to headoffice. Have you got a contact number there, if so i would give them a call back,

Jules · 07-04-2008, 10:49

Maybe one of the team can step in as they have good conections with Virgin, this clearly needs sorting out asap.

Raistlin · 07-04-2008, 11:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jules

Maybe one of the team can step in as they have good conections with Virgin, this clearly needs sorting out asap.

Yep, definately need to get one of the Team to look at this. They have good contacts within VM and have been known to work wonders in the past.

---------- Post added at 11:28 ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 ----------

I've PM'd Gav (think he's about at the moment), hopefully he can pass this on (or at least get the ball rolling) - no promises though.

**Gavin** · 07-04-2008, 11:35

Please PM me me with your account number and contact details and i'll pass this on to our contacts for you. Let's see we can give this a big kick up the backside.

Juk · 07-04-2008, 15:33

PM sent mate.

Thank you for your replies once again, hopefully we can get this mess sorted out!

Many thanks.

Raistlin · 07-04-2008, 15:35

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juk

PM sent mate.

Thank you for your replies once again, hopefully we can get this mess sorted out!

Many thanks.

Hope so, good luck

Oh, and

to Cable Forum by the way

Juk · 07-04-2008, 15:55

Thanks, I wish I'd found my way here on a slightly lighter note but I appreciate the welcome nevertheless!

tweetypie/8 · 07-04-2008, 20:16

Quote:

Originally Posted by Juk

Thanks, I wish I'd found my way here on a slightly lighter note but I appreciate the welcome nevertheless!

the very best of luck m8 i hope you crack it.

Juk · 08-04-2008, 23:50

Little update today:
Our contact Becky phoned and said she's added £500 credit to our account temporarily, as apparantly having this bill looming over us is doing bad things for our credit rating! Fabulous.

They're sending another engineer out Friday who will actually come inside this time so that should be interesting!

Can only cross our fingers and hope he's better than the other engineers we've had and can sort this mess out!

Thanks for your support those who replied. Really appreciated.