Virgin Media Community

[snozzle]

Just had two phone calls from people claiming my broadband was slow. The first from 01156920099 was a lady, supposedly called Jenny, who claimed she was from BT Openreach and that my broadband speed was slow and there was a fault with my router. She started asking me to connect a device so they could check it. I asked her for confirmation of who she was and where she was calling from and she confirmed she was Jenny from BT Openreach. When I told her I was a Virgin Media customer and therefore not using BT Openreach she claimed that VM uses BT equipment. At this point I'd listened to enough twaddle and hung up. Literally minutes later I received a call from 064412687225. This time it was a guy claiming to be James from Virgin Media. Same spiel about slow broadband and a faulty router so I asked him to prove that he was from Virgin Media. He also asked me to connect a device to the broadband. When I told him that this is how hackers work he hung up. Both BT and Virgin Media are nigh on impossible to contact and speak to a real life person to confirm or deny that this is a scam but I'm pretty certain it is. Can these calls be investigated in any way ?

[goslow]

The calls were scam calls, as you already suspected. There are various organisations which deal with different types of nuisance call (a reasonable list of roles/responsibilities is in the link below)

https://www.tpsonline.org.uk/pages/nuisance

Unfortunately, reporting each call is time consuming and won't result in any individual action to lessen the number of scam calls you receive.

The automated scam calls are best dealt with via a call screening device/phone.

[saborph]

TPS will not help you in such case. If you have been scammed, defrauded, or experienced cyber crime, you can report it to Action Fraud, via its reporting tool: https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/how-to-report-fraud. You can also seek help and advice over the phone: by calling 0300 123 2040, you can talk to fraud and cybercrime specialists. Based on the reports on 'Who Called Me' website seems like they are also claiming to be from Domestic & General https://who-called.co.uk/Number/01156920099

[snozzle]

Just had another call, this time from 07236 933577. Recorded message stating my service was being terminated due to illegal activity. Press 1 to speak to the help desk. Needless to say, I didn't. Does Virgin Media do anything to investigate these ?

[saborph]

All they can do is block the number on the network level.

[goslow · Accepted solution]

VM don't follow up individual scam calls for individual customers. There would simply be too many of them to investigate and the caller ID numbers are generally faked making tracing them difficult.

If you are a VM landline customer you, unfortunately, have to put in place your own measures to deal with the scam calls.