NTL telephone users

[martind12]

At the moment we have had 4 or 5 of these scam calls i.e. a recorded announcement that tells you you have won a prise or something. Tonight it was a recorded message from the telephone engineer telling me he was working on the line, despite me hanging and un plugging the line the call would not end until it had finished playing its recording.

We called NTL again straight away as we dont want a huge bill and we were told that there was a virus in the NTL phone network and that NTL were powerless to stop this happening. A change of phone number will not work or so we are told.

The only advise we were given was not to answer our phone!!

we are still waiting to hear from them to see if these calls had cost us money.

Has anyone had this problem on the NTL network?

If so please post.

Thanks,
Martin

[MovedGoalPosts]

martind12

I'm not sure about most of this but this bit really worried me:

Originally Posted by martind12

The only advise we were given was not to answer our phone!!

great so what happens if my ansaphone picks up the call

I dunno, but surely you only get charged if you make a call. Can this "virus" make your line seem like it is dialling something?

It all sounds a bit odd to me.

[scrotnig]

This is nothing to do with viruses on networks. The same thing is happening on BT lines as well.

It's just scam companies trying to persuade people to dial premium rate 0906 numbers on the basis that they have 'won a prize'. Do NOT dial these numbers, they will cost you a fortune.

Simply receiving the calls won't cost you anything, the annoying part though is that they tie up your line until they have finished....even if you hang up.

Originally Posted by martind12

We called NTL again straight away as we dont want a huge bill and we were told that there was a virus in the NTL phone network and that NTL were powerless to stop this happening. A change of phone number will not work or so we are told.

That's shocking B$ on the part of somebody.

[paulyoung666]

Originally Posted by Pem

That's shocking B$ on the part of somebody.

you beat me to it , i reckon someone dont know there job , and or , was taking the p!ss out of you , to the site btw , hope you enjoy your stay

[BlueMeany]

Sorry for dragging this up...

I find that the service provided by ntl which blocks annonymous calls seems to work wonders.

To stop annonymous calls its *227#

and to re-allow them, its #227#

Theres some fandangled way of allowing certain people access on annonymous lines, if you know who they are and their number... but i've not sussed that out

[andygrif]

Also if anyone does get these calls trying to ask people to dial premium numbers - you should report them to ICTSTIS - they will need the premium number that you are being asked to call.

I had an interesting one over the weekend on my mobile - a text message from an 0871 number, claming to be my voicemail and asking me to call the number to retrieve - 0871 numbers are nation rates.

Apparently if I had dialled it, I would have prompted to call a premium rate number. But by the time I did icstis had taken them down!

[Halcyon]

The other scam is where they call you and then ask you to press a number to continue or select a service.
This instantly changes the call and routes it so that you are paying.


SOmeone here mentioned that even when you put your phone down the call continues. I've noticed this too. Does anyone know how they "hog" the line ?

[bob_builder]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

The other scam is where they call you and then ask you to press a number to continue or select a service.
This instantly changes the call and routes it so that you are paying.

Sort of:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/mobile.asp

Originally Posted by Halcyon

SOmeone here mentioned that even when you put your phone down the call continues. I've noticed this too. Does anyone know how they "hog" the line ?

This is true of anybody ringing you; the phone call only ends when the caller hangs-up. If a friend rang you and you answered on one phone but wanted to move to another extension in your house, you could do so by replacing the receiver and then picking up the other one as long as your friend does not hang up in the mean time.

[Pritch]

Originally Posted by Halcyon

The other scam is where they call you and then ask you to press a number to continue or select a service.
This instantly changes the call and routes it so that you are paying.

Ah, one of my favourite ones, this one. This has been debunked by us, BT and ICSTIS (although some Trading Standards departments had a bee in their bonnets about if for a while). Here's why it can't happen:

• When you're on a call, the switch won't pick up anything on your line after the call has routed, unless you press the R / Recall button
• Even if the switch could pick up something you'd dialled in the middle of a call, there would have to be a route set up on the switch for whatever it was. In short, if the call asked you to press '6' to claim your prize, the switch would have to be setup to connect you to the premium rate line after pressing 6. This would cause horrendous problems because it would mean everytime someone tried dialling a number that began with 6, they'd connect to the premium rate line.
• And finally, I can't remember exactly how much the maximum rate for a UK call is, but it's considerably less than £20 per minute.

[TheBlueRaja]

Originally Posted by Pem

That's shocking B$ on the part of somebody.

I soooo hope i get one of these guys one day.

[poolking]

I think I got one of these calls last week.

[MikeyB]

Originally Posted by Pritch

• And finally, I can't remember exactly how much the maximum rate for a UK call is, but it's considerably less than £20 per minute.

It's £1.50 a minute, acording to the link posted by bob_builder. And I've seen that quoted else where to.

[Halcyon]

The thing is when you've ran down 2 flights of stairs to get to the phone...and you realise its one of these calls, you just want to tell them where to go....but now you cant as its a stupid american voice recorded message.

VERY fustrating !!!!