ghost call charges to landline

[HG2]

We have a recurrent problem with Virgin charging us for calls on a landline we never use (there are no children in the house). It's always a low amount of money - c. £3 per monthly bill, but it's a persistent  and inexplicable charge. After arguing with Virgin, they refunded one of these monthly amounts, but the charges are still appearing on the subsequent monthly bills - even after we unplugged the phone!  We only took the Virgin landline in the first place because we were told it was the most economic way of getting the broadband package.  After a series of fruitless recent calls to Virgin customer service, (they just keep repeating that we 'must in fact be making phone calls') we are left with no option but to cancel the landline - as a point of principle, but also to reassert some basic control over the bill. I see in the past (on this forum) there have been similar issues with these ghost calls - it was said they were generated by some sort of external BT phone engineer activity...  Has anyone recently had similar issues?

[Chris_W1]

Hi HG2, thanks for the message and welcome to the forums. I am sorry to see that you are getting charged for calls which are not made "ghost calls". I will send you a private message to get some account details in order to look into this further for you. Chris

[goslow]

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@HG2 wrote:

We have a recurrent problem with Virgin charging us for calls on a landline we never use (there are no children in the house). It's always a low amount of money - c. £3 per monthly bill, but it's a persistent  and inexplicable charge. <snip>

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Out of interest, do you receive your phone service via the back of the VM hub or from a conventional telephone master socket?

Presumably if the monthly amount of money is low, the actual numbers being dialled are not available and are all contained in a sub-50p per call total.

Hopefully @Chris_W1 can investigate and resolve for you.

Similar recent topic here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Being-charged-for-calls-we-have-not...

with some discussion about some common features of the 'phantom calls' from past topics.

[HG2]

Many thanks for this reply.  The phone line plugs into a normal telephone socket, not the VM hub, and there are no itemised numbers, because of the low amount of money. When I first contacted Virgin they mentioned the speaking clock (as if! We have a couple of desktop pcs plus laptops, a couple of smart phones and a digital radio - why would we be calling the speaking clock,for goodness sake!)  And I see this has cropped up in other ghost call charge cases that have been posted. Horrific to read the case of another poster in 2019, who ended up with a £97 bill of unexplained ghost call charges.  Chris is on the case, but otherwise it looks as if we'll have to lose the landline as the only sure solution. 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

Out of the last 49 complaints on the forums about phantom charges, 5 of them (including your own) have mentioned the speaking clock included in call charges

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/phantom-calls/td-p/4596229

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Being-charges-for-landline-calls-not-made/td-p/46354...

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Unanswered-Complaint/td-p/4800483

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Home-Phone/Charged-land-line-calls-although-I-never-use-the-lan...

so it is not something unique to your own situation. Some online searches suggest it is technicians dialling the number to test a line but I have no idea if that would be true or a mythical explanation. I would have thought technicians have their own test numbers to dial.

For customers with a traditional phone line/socket a 'crossed line' is often put forward as an explanation.

Going forward, you could ask VM to apply full itemisation to your bill (which should be free I believe) so you should then see any calls generating a charge as well as dates and times of the alleged calls.

You may be able to get information on the past charges from a DSAR as mentioned here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Being-charged-for-calls-we-have-not...

but that would rely on VM providing all of the required information and doing so in a timely fashion.

[HG2]

Many thanks - I especially appreciate the links you provided to all the past cases (most of which I didn't find via my general search).  I now see others affected have been chasing this up repeatedly with Virgin, spending large amounts of their time and energy to do so, and getting precisely nowhere (and getting very stressed in the process).  I marvel that the onus is always on us as consumers to 'prove' we haven't made calls rather than on Virgin to 'prove' that we have!   At the individual level I think the only solution is for us to cancel the landline. But looking at the collective problem overall, I also think that this has been going on long enough/affecting people badly enough (all the problems with customer services that have been recounted on the posts) that it has to be taken beyond Virgin now - not least to the regulator.