itemised phone bill & phantom calls
I don’t have a fully itemised phone bill (which is part of my issue here) but recently I noticed we had large usage charges for landline phone calls on our bill, yet there is no phone attached to the landline! The charges, inc VAT, amounted to around £14.00 in October, for around 60 calls lasting a total of 12 mins - which means phoning around twice a day but for less than 20 seconds. I looked back and realised that the charges started at least as far back as January (I’ve been a customer for around 10 yrs and had largely stopped bothering to check the bill) but then they were only around £5.00 for the month, and they’ve been gradually increasing since. And just to remind you - there is no phone attached to the landline!
I have contacted virgin repeatedly via their awful chat service but have found it incredibly frustrating and wish I could speak to someone. They won’t even tell me which number I’m alleged to have called (apparently that’s against company policy!) and I’ve requested a full itemised bill listing the number or numbers but they haven’t even been able to do that. I’ve also asked them to block the number (whichever number it is) but again nothing. So guess what, a new bill arrived for November with even more usage charges (64 calls this time) amounting to £15.12 inc VAT. They did suggest sending out an engineer to look at the line so I said ok, I’ll try anything, but when he arrived he had no idea what he was being sent to look at. When I described the problem he was very sympathetic, agreed it sounded like a fraud / scam, but said there was nothing he could do and went off without even getting his tools out. And I’ve just discovered that I will have to pay £25 for that enlightening visit.
Can someone please help me?I feel totally trapped, unable to stop these charges as they keep on rising, and just don’t know how to resolve this. I’ve been a customer for about ten years but this has been such an ordeal I would have happily cancelled if it wasn’t for the fact that I was trapped in a contract. Can someone identify which number I’m supposed to have called and then help me establish that these are phantom calls so I can get a refund. Thanks
forret86 wrote:It’s a conventional wall socket
In which case you may well have a 'crossed line' where the connection for your line/number is linked in someway to another line/number which is running up the charges against your account. The visiting VM tech is supposed to check that no such interconnections are happening so it is a poor show that they did no investigating from what you have described.
If you plug in a phone to your line (borrow one from a friend, family member, neighbour if you do not have one) do you have dial tone on the line? Can you ring out?
If you dial your landline number what message or tones do you hear?
I would suggest you speak to OFCOM for advice on what billing info VM should provide you with in a case like this.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/contact-us
VM has an obligation to provide billing info for free which allows you sufficient information to identify and monitor call charges (C3.7 below)
The default reply from VM staff on here has been in the past that they can only provide the info to identify the calls if a court order is provided (an answer which I am somewhat incredulous about).
You might get some information from a DSAR but I don't know what level of detail that goes into for the call charges
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/dsar
Do you get to see any of the numbers being called which are generating the charges or are they all lumped into the sub-50p category?
Phantom call charges typically follow certain patterns of number dialling which make it easy to identify them if any of the numbers are showing.
Finally, do you have any other items of equipment connected to the line which might be running up charges? There have been past topics on here where devices such as security or personal alarms, health monitors, audio visual or computer equipment, other telecoms devices such as call blockers have been dialling out unexpectedly and generating call charges.