People making calls from our line...
 

Sorry for the essay but this is really complicated and extremely stressful.

We have been good customers of Telewest/Virgin Media for over ten years. We have never faulted a payment and never had any serious problems with our phone line, internet or T.V. packages.

On 26th January 2008 an Engineer from Virgin Media came out to repair a fault on our phone line (the line went dead for some reason on the 19th January) and since that exact date unknown mobile numbers started appearing on our telephone bill. Calls were being made to Yemen and Saudi Arabia which came to £147 on the phone bill. These calls were not made by us and only started on the date the engineer had came. Over the past our monthly bills for telephone calls have been around £20, with about 20-30 calls made – this bill had almost 250 made. We had also been receiving random phone calls from people we did not know saying our number had phoned them, sometimes at ridiculous hours like 2 a.m.

Another engineer came out from Virgin Media to check the physical line (green box outside house) and said there was NO problem on the line!

We asked for an investigation by Virgin Media and this was escalated to the fraud department. We also asked for a total call barring to go on the phone line to try and stop these hacked phone calls being made from our line. The current bill is totalling another £100 already. We were not told how to activate this call barring plus we had to wait a further 24 hours for it to be on our account as the previous advisor put a ban to premium rate numbers only on the account which needed 24 hours to remove. It was finally active on Thursday 28th February this is logged on the computer.

On the 2nd March we were very shocked and disturbed to receive another call from an unknown person who had received a call from OUR number which he obviously would not recognise. We did not phone this person. We rang Virgin Media immediately to see what had happened to the call barring; they said it was still active. We asked how someone could get around the call barring as only my mother knows the PIN number and hasn’t shared it anyone. The advisor this time was totally unhelpful and wasn’t the least bit interested.

So our account is still being charged for these calls we are not making.

We have gathered written evidence of our clocking-in records from the workplaces of all of us to prove we were out when some of these calls were being made.

We were put on soft disconnect about 2 weeks ago, no TV, no Internet and no usage of the calls - but they carried on (bill is now around £600).

Today we were told by the Fraud Department that this was NOT a case of illegal fraudulent use, which leaves us all destroyed.

We got back intouch with customer services and the woman my mother spoke to sounded very helpful and checked our records, we've NEVER even dialed a bloody international number in 10 years!!

Basically, 10+ years of fine service,
26th January Engineer comes to "fix" line,
huge amount of calls from that date,
2nd engineer came out to check line and said there was NO crossed wire or anything,
fraud squad says it's not hacked or illegal usage...

Does ANYONE have the slightest idea of what could of gone on? How/What could that engineer of done to us to make this happen? Is there anything that could of gone wrong with the lines on virgins end?

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

I'd ask Vm to explain why calls (that you didn't make) were allowed to connect during the period of soft disconnect. That in itself shows there is a problem. I'd also write to
Complaints,
Virgin Media,
PO Box 333,
Matrix Court,
Swansea.
SA7 9ZJ

Or you can fill out a complaint form here
https://help2.virginmedia.com/assets...intformCZ.html

and submit it.

I'd probably do both. If you get nowhere contact Watchdog or someone similar.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Thanks for the response.

The woman at the fraud department told my mom that even though we were on soft disconnect some switch wasn't actually turned off or something meaning it wasn't 100% conclusive that we couldn't make the calls... it's a shambles.

I filled out that complaint form - thank you for that.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Update:

Net is back temporarily.

Case has been passed to head office.

Our billings contact we have in Virgin (Becky something) said the case is the talk of the call centre and is being looked into thoroughly.

She said she's never known of something like this happening (calls getting through soft disconnect + risk barring) and the evidence is stacking in our favour. Good news finally!

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

The best of luck and nice to hear they are taking it seriously.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Okay another update.

4th April we had another engineer come out to test the green box / white box outside our house - both were fine with no crossed wire which we told them already.

He did however confirm we couldn't make calls from this line and I told him we're on risk bar / soft disconnect. He even asked me if we wanted the line turned back on to make outgoing calls - which I declined until this investigation/mess is over.

Now today I just got off the phone with a debt collection agency calling on behalf of Virgin Media! Credit Solutions is the name, I asked them if they knew this was still being investigated and the useless woman on the phone said that's irrelevant and the account owner needs to phone back today.

I'm appalled by this treatment we are receiving for something we're clearly not doing! (The calls CARRIED ON whilst we've been on risk bar / soft disconnect!!!!) But they seem to be dragging their feet due to not knowing wtf is going on.

I have no idea who we can turn to but this definitely isn't fair.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

You said in a previous post, it had been sent to headoffice. Have you got a contact number there, if so i would give them a call back,

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Maybe one of the team can step in as they have good conections with Virgin, this clearly needs sorting out asap.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Yep, definately need to get one of the Team to look at this. They have good contacts within VM and have been known to work wonders in the past.

---------- Post added at 11:28 ---------- Previous post was at 11:24 ----------

I've PM'd Gav (think he's about at the moment), hopefully he can pass this on (or at least get the ball rolling) - no promises though.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Please PM me me with your account number and contact details and i'll pass this on to our contacts for you. Let's see we can give this a big kick up the backside.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

PM sent mate.

Thank you for your replies once again, hopefully we can get this mess sorted out!

Many thanks.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Hope so, good luck :tu:

Oh, and :welcome: to Cable Forum by the way :D

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Thanks, I wish I'd found my way here on a slightly lighter note but I appreciate the welcome nevertheless!

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

the very best of luck m8 i hope you crack it.:tu:

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Little update today:
Our contact Becky phoned and said she's added £500 credit to our account temporarily, as apparantly having this bill looming over us is doing bad things for our credit rating! Fabulous.

They're sending another engineer out Friday who will actually come inside this time so that should be interesting!

Can only cross our fingers and hope he's better than the other engineers we've had and can sort this mess out!

Thanks for your support those who replied. Really appreciated.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Sounds like there could be some progress being made, hopefully - keep us updated and hang in there :)

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

I hope it is sorted soon, the team here do a marvelous job helping the members to sort things like this out

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Brilliant update!!

Just got off the phone with someone from VM who said he works closely with the team at the cableforum, he's added credit to the account to clear this debt and wants to talk to my step-father (account holder) regarding compensation!!!

I can't thank you enough for your help Gavin you've been amazing. I can't believe this finally looks like its being sorted fast.

THANK YOU!

From all my family :)

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

That's an excellent result. Glad you got it sorted :tu:

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Glad to see that it's been sorted for you :)

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

:woot:

Looks like another good result for Cable Forum (and our very own, very likeable, Gavin).

I'll hold off breaking out the shampoo until everything's finally resolved and the OP says they've had everything they're due, but if this goes the way I hope it's gonna go well done to Gav, well done to CF, and well done to VM for sorting it out :tu:

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Glad me and Raistlin could point you in the right direction and it looks like it is going to be finaly sorted out for you :tu:

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Are we gonna find out exactly what the problem was and how it was corrected?

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

The manager I spoke to today said he had IT teams and some other team looking into exactly how this could of happened but he was certain it wasn't our doing.

As soon as we find out I'll update this thread; it's the least I could do!

Thanks again

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Well this has happened to us loads of times, just block international and premium rate numbers just incase it happens again.

I was watching a programme about this and in one house alone, someone had hacked into BT's network and BT payphones and got away with £90,000 worth of calls every week! Thats a lot of calls for a week! Whoever is doing this, will get a long sentence!

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Yeah, but this only happened after an engineer visit.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Okay update for all those curious!

We were told the problem was a network crossing error on VM's end, haven't really been told much more than that.
We also had our phoneline totally disconnected anyway just incase this happens again, not worth the stress lol!

To be fair once the matter was brought up to Management it was dealt with pretty fast, it just seemed to be a long and annoying path proving our innocence (having to tell the same story to random call centre personnel countless times - until we got our contact anyway!).

Our VM bills from since this trouble started were erased and we received a cheque too as a goodwill gesture.

Thanks again for your help with this; it really did give it a good kick it up the arse and get things moving!

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Now, if only I could get my broadband to work as smooth as it did many months ago. Oh well, thanks for the update.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

Glad to hear it's been sorted for you.

Re: People making calls from our line...
 

not much point Watchdog are iggy iv sent them more then a few emails about problems that iv had with VM ripping me off & they never sent me as much as an automated reply.