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Phantom calls charged on my bill

wee1s
Joining in

Hi

My landline has not been working for approx 6 months as we never use our landline for outbound calls and only really receive unwanted sales calls this went unnoticed. I cannot make any phone calls (I have tried 2 different phones) and when I phone my landline from my mobile I hear the phone ring once then followed by some weird crackling noises then the line goes dead. In September I called VM to request this be fixed. An engineer was supposed to come out and check the line, he/she never turned up. 

As we never use the landline I never bothered to rearrange the engineer visit. However upon checking my bills I have noticed that my unusable phone line is making phone calls and I am being charged on average £5 per month for calls that I never made. Some of these calls are at 5am when nobody in the house is even awake!

After reading this forum I have noticed others experiencing similar phantom calls. Could someone at VM please help with this.

Thanks

John

4 REPLIES 4

Akua_A
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @wee1s

Welcome to our community forums and thank you for your first post.

Sorry to hear that your landline has not been working for 6 months and that you may be getting charged for phantom calls. We further apologize for the missed call back. 

Just to confirm, how far back does the £5 landline charge go on your account? Have you been able to verify this in your my VM account under bills? Also, have you checked to see all connections to the back of your phone device are fixed securely?

Thanks,

Akua_A
Forum Team

New around here? Check out the do's and don'ts, in our Community FAQs


The phantom calls started in July and I have verified this in my online billing. I have no phones connected to my line in my house as the phone had started making noises when there was no calls coming through. It is all very strange. I had disconnected my phone from the box on the wall back in September when I had requested an engineer visit and even after no phones were connected I am still being charged for phone calls that literally impossible to make.

Regards

Thank you for letting me know this @wee1s.

In this case, I have sent a private message regarding this. Please lookout for the purple envelope on the top right-hand corner and provide a response when you can.

Thanks,

Akua_A
Forum Team

New around here? Check out the do's and don'ts, in our Community FAQs


goslow
Alessandro Volta

@wee1s wrote:

The phantom calls started in July and I have verified this in my online billing. I have no phones connected to my line in my house as the phone had started making noises when there was no calls coming through. It is all very strange. I had disconnected my phone from the box on the wall back in September when I had requested an engineer visit and even after no phones were connected I am still being charged for phone calls that literally impossible to make.


Common features of a 'phantom call' topic on here usually include:

  • Line never used by the customer (often with no phone plugged in at all)
  • A fault of some description exists on the line
  • Calls to random numbers which the customer knows nothing about (often involving premium rate 09 or 08# chargeable, sometimes calls to the speaking clock are mentioned or high cost international calls)
  • Calls charged for at all hours of the day and night (so unlikely to be made by the customer)
  • Often the numbers from the calls are hidden from view in the sub-50p category on the bills so are difficult to track down what numbers are being called.