Someone has opened an Orange contract in my name

cifpower

I tried to text out this evening but for some reason it said "message barred". So I tried ringing out only to hear the message "calls are barred from this phone". I wondered why because I have paid my bill every month by direct debit and have no outstanding balance.

I telephoned Orange to find out a second contract has been taken out in my name on the Raccoon package (I use Dolphin for the unlimited texts), the bill hasn't been paid and a bar has been placed on my phone by the fraud team which the customer service team cannot remove. I have to ring back tomorrow to talk to the fraud team.

I'm bricking it! I have never had fraud committed on my name before. The odd thing is that I have never received a second bill in my name to my address.

clio

could be an error m8, you,ll be ringing them tomorrow so hope it,s easly sorted out:)

cifpower

Definitely not an error. He confirmed that there were two contracts in my name at my address with 2 different plans - the fraudulent one was taken out from Phones4U

Jon_01

Ok, don't worry.

Call back tomorrow and it'll all get sorted out for you (between 9 and 5:30.
I work in the fraud dept I'm fairly sure I can see what's happened here and sorting it out won't affect you at all (apart from losing use of the phone for a few hours)...

cifpower

Jon_01 wrote: »

Ok, don't worry.

Call back tomorrow and it'll all get sorted out for you (between 9 and 5:30.
I work in the fraud dept I'm fairly sure I can see what's happened here and sorting it out won't affect you at all (apart from losing use of the phone for a few hours)...

Thanks for you advice :T

What do you think happened here? Apart from the obvious really. I wonder if I should get my credit report to see if its listed there or if anything else has been taken out in my name.

Browntoa

you can do the free credit expert one

http://www.creditexpert.co.uk/

or one of these

http://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/free-credit-report.html

cifpower

Browntoa wrote: »

you can do the free credit expert one

http://www.creditexpert.co.uk/

or one of these

http://www.equifax.co.uk/Products/free-credit-report.html

Thank you. Will give that a try.

cifpower

Looked at my Equifax file and there was a second contract taken out on 21 June. There is a current balance of £109

Jon_01

cifpower wrote: »

Thanks for you advice :T

What do you think happened here? Apart from the obvious really. I wonder if I should get my credit report to see if its listed there or if anything else has been taken out in my name.

I'd love to explain it all but if I do that on an open forum it makes all our systems pointless as it might give clues on how to make doing this easier.

It won't have gotten to your credit file yet and a member our team will contact the billing team to tell them that we're taking it over and that'll stop it going any further.
It may take a bit of time to sort it (we have to check all kind of things, including that it might be a genuine mistake somewhere, ie someone could have miss typed a digit in the acc number).

cifpower

After 20 minutes on hold to the fraud team they decided the contract wasn't mine and they lifted the bar on my phone.

Jon_01

cifpower wrote: »

After 20 minutes on hold to the fraud team they decided the contract wasn't mine and they lifted the bar on my phone.

Sorry about that. The fraud team is VERY small (and I'm not in today either) and it can be a problem sometimes.
For some reason the 'powers that be' don't think we need more staff.

I'm glad your back up and running...