HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

I encountered a problem with my telephone service going back to at least February of this year, whereby another persons call charges have been appearing on my telephone bill. These charges appeared on the March bill. I can't check the extent of this problem as although I was informed that I could receive itemised bills for the previous 6 months, (and not be charged for these bills if the problem was a recurring one), no itemised bills have been forthcoming.

I have reported this problem, yet still, every month, I receive a telephone bill which has calls made by another party (i.e. no-one in my household). Although my telephone usage charges are being credited, every month I have to contact customer services and report the fraudulent use of my telephone, upon which my account will be credited. At the moment, I believe that my account is around £100.00 in credit – and this amount can only increase, as the calls made by the 3rd party far exceed my charges for TV and line rental.

Apparently, 2 engineers have been despatched to check on the line – the first engineer stated that there were “corroded nodes” but the fault had been rectified. The second engineer stated that there was no problem.

I have lodged a formal complaint by e-mail (automated form) and as I received no response I sent another.

I then finally received another call back and some effort has been make to attempt to deal with this matter and investigate by telephoning the numbers that appear on the itemised bill to ensure that they do not know me. However, upon receipt of the August bill (for calls made during July), once I finally managed to contact the person at VM, although I was issued another credit against my account, they've that they don't know what else to do and cannot suggest anything else, but has passed this on to an engineer. Apparently an additional £15 worth of calls have been made between the last call date on the bill and the last telephone call to VM.

Every month I am waiting on tenterhooks for my bill. I then have to contact Virgin Media to ensure that I am not paying for calls I have not made, and hope that my account is credited. I am led to believe that this credit is discretionary, which would suggest that at any time, Virgin Media may decline the credit. For the past few months I have made little or no use of my phone, so that it may be obvious to any investigation that any calls made have not been made by me. At no time has credit for my line rental been offered. I have suggested a change in phone line, but apparently, that would not rectify the problem. My only real solution would be to change suppliers but I have been told that I would have to pay a penalty for ending my contract early.

Help - what do I do next? The engineer was supposed to phone me and hasn't. Customer Services have washed their hands. Any ideas?

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

:welcome:

You could try e-mailing the CEO office, they have been successful in rectifying problems in the past, the address is neil.berkett@virginmedia.co.uk. Hope your problem gets sorted :)

Ben

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

Thanks Ben - will try that!

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

Hi
I had similar proble got them to disconect me I now use vonage far cheaper than Virgin and did not get the not dialled call charges from them.

Ron

Admin edit (Chris): This isn't a forum for casual abuse. People and companies have proper names - please use them.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

Hi - thought I'd update in case anyone else has the same problem! To cut a very long story short, each month I've been contacting Virgin to report the erroneous calls, and each month the cost of these calls has been refunded. I was about to contact Neil Berkett as per instructions above, but was, on the same day, contacted by Virgin to say the problem had been sorted - a loose connection in one of the green street boxes - and therefore all should be well.
Lo and behold, the next month's bill came in with erroneous calls on again. So each month, I've been contacting Virgin, giving them details of the calls, and then getting a refund on those calls

Now, however, it may all be sorted - I was finally passed on to Peter Taylor (Technology?) - he had a look and said that it looks like someone elses a/c had been put onto my a/c on the computer & all their calls were coming through on my bill. He said I'm the only person he's ever had to deal with with this situation (???!!!) As an apology, he granted 3 months free service and upgrade to XL TV.

Fingers crossed - we'll see what next months bill says!

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

hope it's all sorted now :)

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

sounds like a bunk excuse to me.

This same thing is happening to me right now only the calls claimed to have been made have not been made at all. One call was to a mobile number for 3 hours. i used my mobile to phone it and it was a lady that had no idea who i was, nor had she taken a 3 hour call on the date in question. the call never happened. this number has been called several times since as i can view the next bill and apparently we called again just two days ago for an hour.

The help lines are less than helpful... the operators seem to infer that i am telling lies. Declaring that somebody must have made the call. we don't know each other, the lady can confirm we don't know each other...

the calls have not been made... so where have they came from?

there is a glitch in your software that needs patching... and i believe it is Virgin's policy to deny when these glitches occur and blame it on the customer.... well i'm certainly not going to pay for calls that I have never made. That amounts to extortion and I honestly believe this is turning into a police matter.

I have the number we supposedly called and we both can confirm we never spoke to each other or met each other before in our lives. she will also confirm that she never took a call that lasted for 3 hours.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

You do realize that the forum is not owned or operated by Virgin don't you?

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

yes... it would say virgin rather than cable. You do realise that realize is a US spelling?

I'm not sure how either helps my situation though... are you?

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

International differences in spelling is irrelevant to this forum.. Jon T was simply pointing out that we are not virgin media so telling us that "there is a glitch in your software that needs patching..." won't get you anywhere..you do realize that?

There is actually a prescribed method to report issues like this on your bill and I'm sure that some of the friendly members of staff will tell you exactly how to proceed once they eventually read this thread, or you can use the search facilities to find out the answer for yourself as it has been discussed before.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

My comment was an attempt to show that my choice of words has no relevance. Obviously a typo and not worth mentioning just like an englishman's misuse of a Z. no need to post. no help, just one comment. no point in making the comment.

I've used the massive search engine known as google, looked at lots of threads about this sort of thing on all kinds of different sites. Now i'd like to hear some views on said subject if you have any. The subject, not the wording of my post.

---------- Post added at 20:11 ---------- Previous post was at 20:00 ----------

after rereading your responses i can see i'm at the wrong place. The technical explanations i require will be well beyond the scope of this forum. i apologise for posting. I'll find somewhere where the members have some technical knowledge and don't just post for no reason.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

Goodbye....

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

First thing you need to do is request a Toll Enquiry on your line from Customer Care on 150, they will then investigate if there has been an error on VM's side and see if the line actually made the call.

If it turns out the line DID make the call and you still dispute it, then a tech will call to check the local cab - this has in the past been done with a warning that you MAY be charged for the call-out if the tech finds no fault with the VM equipment.

If you are 100% sure you didn't make the call, then proceed with this... if there is a chance someone made it, then I'd drop it now as it may cost you more.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

But this is like when I had no dial tone and it took time to fix the fault it turned out that someone had disconnected my line from the cabinet on the roof of the flats and at the main cabinets in the street and the door is always open.

A month later, got a bill with a strange series of 0844 and 0871 numbers being called just lasting seconds each and these numbers were not recognised when you rang them.

Re: HELP! charges for phone calls not made by me
 

you've got proof of a fault there though, so that should have been quickly sorted out for you?