Virgin Media Community

[parkster]

hi. basically i have been with virgin for several years and i never had this problem before. on my bill appeared a charge for an international number i certainly didn't phone. i live on my own and i know exactly  what calls are made. the number was not even in my dailing out list on my phone when i checked. i know for a fact i 100% didnt make the call. it looked like an Indian dailing code and no i never ever ring numbers back that i don't recognize

i managed to speak to someone in a uk call center and he admitted that my number could have been piggy backed? i have been refunded for the call but i am so concerned that this is going to happen again. i have done a search on this and have found loads of people saying the same.i was advised to go into my virgin media and look for customer call barring but i cant find it anywhere. the tech person didnt seem to know where it could be but told me there was an option somewhere for it.

can you point me in the right direction as i never have to phone abroad and i  would like to stop any international calls from being dialed. then there is no excuses off virgin.i just wasted about an hour of my time trying to resolve this and i shouldn't really have too. something seems broken if people can piggy back my number and i get charged for it! i have even heard of people getting charged when they dont even have a phone plugged in?  what the hell is going on there then?

[Vikki_M]

Hi @parkster

Thank you for your post and welcome back to our community. 

I am sorry to hear about whats happened. Did the agent you spoke with discuss the possibility of a crossed line at all?

If you would like to add call barring to the account, there is a £2.25 monthly fee for this. Would you still be happy to proceed?

Please pop me a reply when you can. 

[goslow]

Seems like a very strange arrangement when the customer feels the need to pay £2.25 p.m. to stop his/her VM phone line running up unexplained international call charges!

@parkster

Unexplained phantom calls get mentioned on here regularly. If you have a phone line from a traditional telephone wall socket (rather than via the hub) then a 'crossed line' is frequently put forward as an explanation (but phantom charges have also been mentioned for phone connections via the hub too).

If you don't have it already, would suggest you get full itemisation applied to the billing on your phone line. This should be FOC.

Quite often with these kinds of phantom calls, the cost ends up buried in the sub-50p (not itemised) default category and identifying the numbers called is very difficult to prove you didn't call them and have no connection with the numbers called.

Once full itemisation is in place, suggest you monitor you usage charges closely in 'My Virgin Media' and keep an eye on any charges to see if anything similar happens again.

[parkster]

To be fair i'm really not keen on paying extra to stop my number from getting spoofed.sounds crazy that i have to do that?

question for you. is it right that if your number gets spoofed  that you can get billed? i asked the advisors  i spoke too. one said yes, a couple  said they  didn't know and one chap  answer was " sod all they can do" and told me to ring the police? I was like what the hell lol surely this cant be right.i find there's no consistency  with your helps lines. sometimes they can be great and sometimes awful. i find the uk helplines to be much better. i cringe when they answer and it sounds like they are the other side of the world. i say to myself.." this is going to be hard work"

[parkster]

yes i thought that.  a charge to stop this happening just seems insane. it shouldn't be happening anyway.

yes the line is coming from my hub but like you said. its been reported that it can still happen anyway.i will just have to keep a strict eye on it.

i suppose there is a charge for full itemized billing?

thanks for the heads up

[goslow]

There should not be a charge for having full itemisation of the phone bill.

There have been past cases of phantom call charges mentioned on here where the customer has a phone connection via the hub.

I am sure VM knows what the possible causes of the phantom charges are but, frequently, the customer has to fight a battle to get them resolved and refunded. If you have already had the charge refunded then you have won a small victory there.

Usually, these kinds of topics are swiftly taken off to private message by the forum team and little information/explanation comes back to the public forum as to the root cause of the issue for a particular case.

[Hayley_S]

Hello @parkster,

I am sorry that there is a charge for this call blocker, but this is what we can do for you.

Let us know if you would like to go ahead with getting this added.

Many thanks,