on 21-01-2022 18:22
Good evening. I am hoping someone may help me as after speaking to 2 customer services people who do not understand me! At 10am today the police knock on my door. Telling me I have dialled 999, from the landline. Our landline has not been used in over 4 years, we do not have a landline phone plugged in, they said this also happened in December they tell me, a police officer knocked in December but we were out and missed the ring doorbell. Customer services say they have no idea. I've asked them to remove the landline from our services but they want to charge more for the privilege. Can anyone please help. I am so cross that our already stretched emergency services have been sent to my house when we haven't dialled them. Thanks
Answered! Go to Answer
21-01-2022 18:33 - edited 21-01-2022 18:38
This has been mentioned before. Very annoying for you and a waste of time for the overstretched emergency services
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/home-phone/m-p/4607348#M148827
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Phantom-outgoing-calls-including-999/td-p/4654481
Do you happen to have any other devices plugged into the phone line (burglar alarm systems etc.) which might be generating false alarm calls?
One of the VM forum team should reply here shortly and should send a tech swiftly to investigate for you.
Also worth checking you have no 'phantom call' charges on your phone bill too.
21-01-2022 18:33 - edited 21-01-2022 18:38
This has been mentioned before. Very annoying for you and a waste of time for the overstretched emergency services
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/home-phone/m-p/4607348#M148827
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Phantom-outgoing-calls-including-999/td-p/4654481
Do you happen to have any other devices plugged into the phone line (burglar alarm systems etc.) which might be generating false alarm calls?
One of the VM forum team should reply here shortly and should send a tech swiftly to investigate for you.
Also worth checking you have no 'phantom call' charges on your phone bill too.
on 21-01-2022 18:48
Hi @BeckyBex,
Welcome to our Community Forums! Thank you for your first post, and I'm sorry to hear that you're experiencing this issue! I can understand that this can be frustrating and worrying.
I am sorry that you have been misadvised by our call agents. This issue does happen and we'll be more than happy to investigate further for you.
I will send you a Private Message, so please keep an eye out for a purple envelope at the top right corner of your page. I will be in touch soon.
Thank you.
on 21-01-2022 18:48
Thank you very much for your reply. I have just checked this month's bill, I never normally check and there is a call to a local number made on Dec 17th at 06:46 that we obviously haven't made. I googled the number and the top result said it was a 'bad number' the call costs 89pence. There is nothing plugged in to the socket at all.
on 21-01-2022 19:05
@BeckyBex wrote:Thank you very much for your reply. I have just checked this month's bill, I never normally check and there is a call to a local number made on Dec 17th at 06:46 that we obviously haven't made. I googled the number and the top result said it was a 'bad number' the call costs 89pence. There is nothing plugged in to the socket at all.
If you respond to the PM from Paulina_Z, that should get the ball rolling for VM to investigate.
If you have a conventional telephone wall socket, VM's usual explanation is a 'crossed line', which requires investigation by a VM tech.
If you go back through your past bills via 'My Virgin Media' you may find similar unexplained call charges. You might also possibly get an idea of when the fault started based on when any unknown charges first appeared.
These 'phantom calls' usually include some/all of the following: the customer has no phone connected; multiple calls to random numbers at all hours of the day and night; repeated calls of very short duration; calls to 084 and 09 numbers; calls to the speaking clock.
Coincidentally, the topics about this on here often seem to come in groups at the same time. Yours is the fourth topic about unexplained call charges in the last couple of days.
If you do find any more unexplained charges, you may wish to ask VM to put full itemisation onto your phone bill (even if you have no phone connected). Quite often the phantom charges are hidden in the sub-50p category and have no number listed so it is hard to identify them as phantom calls. The full itemisation will only help for future bills should the issue persist going forward.
Hope VM can resolve it promptly for you.
on 21-01-2022 19:49
Hi @BeckyBex,
Thank you for coming back to me via private message and confirming your details. I have now booked you a technician visit for your crossed line landline issue – you can check and amend the date and time of your appointment via your online account.
There will be no charge for this visit unless:
• The technician diagnoses the faults as not being caused by our network/equipment
• The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to your equipment
• The technician discovers that the fault or problem relates to any system that we are not responsible for
The technician will confirm during their visit if any of these instances apply, and if so, a £25 charge will be applied to your account.
Please ensure there is someone over the age of 18 present at the time of the visit. If you need to change or cancel your appointment you can do this online or via the MyVM app by 4pm the day before the appointment.
If you do miss an agreed appointment for any reason, a £25 missed appointment charge will be applied to your account on the day of the appointment.
Thank you.
on 21-01-2022 19:56
Goslow you are spot on, thank you very much. I've found more charges, looks like it started in September! I have been in touch with Paulina and we have an engineer coming on Monday to have a look at it. Again, thank you for your great explanations of the phantom calls, if the police hadn't turned up I'd have been non the wiser to it. And I will definitely check my bill more thoroughly!
on 22-01-2022 17:58
It will be easier to convert the line to VoIP than fix the issue
on 22-01-2022 22:17
@jb66 wrote:It will be easier to convert the line to VoIP than fix the issue
A 21CV phone connection from the back of the hub certainly seems to minimise the likelihood of 'phantom call' charges but doesn't seem to eliminate it altogether
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Someone-is-using-my-landline-phone/td-p/4531065
on 11-01-2023 17:14
The exact same thing has happened to me today and no one was home. Like you we have no phone connected. I received a call from the police. When I got home there was two police cars outside my home. Virgin media advised the line hadn't been compromised.