Anyone work in the mobile phone industry?

[Davies]

Hi all,

On Friday night I had my mobile phone stolen and cancelled it on Saturday afternoon when I realised that it was missing. During this time some **** made £72 worth of calls, all to the same number in Italy, and it is so obvioulsly fraud. I just called my provider (O2) and they informed me that I am responsible for paying this, even though they can see that it is fraud, because I had no insurance for my phone. Fair enough, I don't expect them to replace the phone as it wasn't insured, but to expect me to pay for calls that are so obviously fraudulent is not on in my eyes. They ended the call with "sorry sir, our hands are tied"........rubbish!

Is there anything I can do? They did say that they would refund me for any calls that were made after I reported the phone stolen because it takes their system some time to update, but those 3 calls amount to about £2, and are to the same number as the other 80 odd calls made prior to this.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers,

Paul

[mr.anderson]

Hi Paul,

The same thing happened to me. I had my phone stolen on a night bus and cancelled it in the morning when i actaully tried looking for it and couldn't find it. During that time, the thieving barstewards made £412 of calls to Ghana. I spent about 16 hours on the phone to Vodafone over a month fighting it and eventually got the cash bask, but it was not easy.

I argued that they do not offer a bill capping service and that as I do make occasional international i don't want to bar my account from being able to make international calls. As they don't have this facility available, I managed to convince them to refund the money as it is not unreasiable to expect this kind of service on a pay monthly contract.

I have now barred my account from international calls - somehting that i just have to live with because of their poor service.

It may also be worthwhile pointing out that if someone had stolen your debit card and swiped all of your money, there wouldn't be a question about you getting your money back, more a case of when.

I imagine that these calls were totally uncharacteristic - i.e.: you never call Italy, etc.

Fight them to the death - or at least until you get your cash back.

Good luck - let us know what happens!

P

[FG1]

Is there anything on papaer that says that you need to "activate " roaming before using your phone abroad.
If there is and they had roaming turned on without you requesting it then the calls were made without your agreeing to it.
I am with T Mobile and have roaming off unless I am abroad. There is currently an issue which makes the phone display the roaming symbol with roaming not activated. I rang them and they assured me that I would not be charged for any calls abroad.......

[Davies]

Cool advice :D



Cheers Peter, I don't suppose you've got any templates or examples of letters you sent them? I'm going to fight this one.......just found out my upgrade isn't until March next year too so it'll be a crappy cheapo phone for me for a while :(

FGO, the calls were made from this country to Italy and I don't have international call barring activated as I call my folks in Australia quite often.

They should have noticed suspicious activity on my account though like Peter said, I think I'll have to talk to someone more senior for this.

[metalmonkey]

I'll look into from my end, see what advice I can get then let you know. Thunder

[Davies]

I'll look into from my end, see what advice I can get then let you know. Thunder

Cheers dude, BTW, it's 70ish calls to an Italian number, and 4 to a UK-based mobile number, and I have all 5 numbers/times of calls etc ;)

[metalmonkey]

No problem buddy, I'm sure its theft or mis used of tele coms kit, bit I need to check and see what can be done, though if you have chance give ur local station a call, they should have answer for you soon as you call.

[mr.anderson]

I don't suppose you've got any templates or examples of letters you sent them?

Unfortunately not mate - I did it all on the phone.

I did ask them to record the calls and noted the call references though. Just in case.

[metalmonkey]

I have some answer to your questions, but I need more info! PM with the detilas how it was stolen ect, I'll let you know the best thing to do from my side of things, good luck!