Stolen Iphone charges!

BeeBee23

I lost my Iphone on Friday night, and as soon as I got home I called Orange's 24hr service to block it and report stolen. It had a pin code enabled so I was pretty sure nobody could use it to call anyway...or so I thought.

I called Orange repeatedly for over an hour, without being able to speak to anybody, at all. (I managed to key in my mobile number when prompted and key in the option to report it stolen but not actually speak to a person). The phone just kept going dead.

The Iphone was still ringing all of Saturday and Sunday, so I presumed someone, somewhere had it, with intention of returning (I thought a thief would surely switch it off and chuck the sim card away).

I called Orange today (Monday) to see if my attempt at locking it had worked....No it hadn't. They said my sim was taken out and popped straight into another phone!

The person who nicked my phone has been calling Brazil, and run up a bill of £160, which they want me to pay!?

I can prove to them that I tried to call and block it, by using itemised billing on my TalkTalk home phone, but probably not until after Orange have charged me, as TalkTalk provide the details the following month.

Please help...is there any way I can stop the direct debit?
Or any other way I can prove it?

Orange has messed me up every step of the way, they've got addresses wrong, sent the wrong phones etc etc. I've only had this contract for 6 months (out of 18) but I've been with them for 5 years! They have been useless! Ideally I would love to leave them all together?!

I would be so glad for any ideas, or other peoples experiences.

Thank you.

sassy_one

Contact your bank and request to cancel the Direct Debit.

Simple, don't pay the bill and argue it out with them.

Just cancel the DD asap

spike7451

Did you call the police? Doing that & having a police report might strengthen your case.

nickmack

sassy-one wrote: »

Contact your bank and request to cancel the Direct Debit.

Simple, don't pay the bill and argue it out with them.

Just cancel the DD asap

Be very careful about canceling the DD, this could result in further problems for the OP. This is better sorted out with Orange.

Unfortunately, despite the OP's efforts, it sounds like Orange have not been notified of the loss until the Monday, therefore they hold the account holder responsible for any calls over the weekend.

If I were the OP, I would have tried another phone to call them and continued to do so all night/weekend until it was blocked. As it is, speaking to them on Monday was too late. The OP needs to let them know there was a problem getting through to block the SIM and ask them to investigate any problems at that time.

Another lesson learned is to put a PIN on the SIM and the device. As you discovered, it fine to put a PIN on the device, but if you can just use the SIM in another phone, it's useless.