07000 Mobile Scam

Pegleg2001

Take care - and apologies in advance if this has already been flagged up previously.

I received a call on my mobile, which only rang once. Not enough time to answer. No voicemail was left.

I registered the call as coming from an 07xxx number and assumed it was a mobile.

Intrigued, I called back. Phone was answered and appeared to put me on hold with a message like "The person you are calling knows you are waiting, please hold".

I registered I was being scammed within about 10 seconds and hung up.

Sure enough, when the bill came I was charged 20p (outside my normal inclusive minutes quota).

A bit of Googling turned up that it was one of those 07000 personal numbers from a few years ago and not a mobile.

On principle, I called Orange and they were nice and refunded me 3p (I presume their portion), but there is nothing they can do about the scammer.

All those 17p's must add up! I often think that these rogues must be quite clever - so why can't they earn a proper living like the rest of us?

Peggy

Paul_Varjak

All numbers beginning 070 are personal numbers - they are not mobile numbers.

I had this happen to me a few months ago but realised it was a personal number and did not call back!

So if there is a '0' after the '7' it is a personal number, otherwise it is a mobile! Never call back a personal number in these circumstances!

Calling personal numbers can vary between (I think) 0p and 49p/min. from a landline - even more from a mobile!

Greenstuff_2

Hi,

Thanks Pegleg and Paul, I noticed a missed call on my phone which was a 0704 number, no voicemail.
I thought it might have been Virgin as I'd had trouble accessing my account online and they had phoned me about it a couple of times, I thought if it was important they would call back then forgot about it.
A couple of days later my Husband noticed a missed call on his phone which was odd as it had been next to him.
He went to call it as he thought it may be business but when he read out the number it was 0704 and I said that was the same number I had, then I remembered this post.
Thanks for putting this on here, you saved us some money!

Catseyez

I read this post on Friday and the very next day I received a "missed call" on my mobile from an 070... number!! So thank you very much!!

scheming_gypsy

They're not 'always' a scam. My Dad owns a company and use / used to use an 0700 number as you can change where it points to, which came in useful depending who was on call as they could divert it to whichever phone.

sergeant121

They're not 'always' a scam.  My Dad owns a company and use / used to use an 0700 number as you can change where it points to, which came in useful depending who was on call as they could divert it to whichever phone.

.... and costs callers anything up to £0.475 per minute (and got him a good rake-off as well?).

scheming_gypsy

Seeing as you have to pay for the number and then yearly subscription you're not going to 'rake' very much in when you're using the number when you're on-call; ie out of hours emergencies.

MavisM

The on-line electrical retailer https://www.24-7electrical.co.uk have a 0700 number for customer enquiries. They don't answer their emails so you are forced to ring this exorbitantly charged telephone number if you want to get in touch.

k_sta

The guidelines for Personal Numbering (see Ofcom) were changed a few years ago to stop abuse.

They were changed to specifically exclude non-individual use and no revenue share is allowed with the number user.

This was designed to stop the call me back scams.

If you ask me the second rule should be applied to all Non-Geo numbers.

IE all those companies changing from local number to 0870/0845 and the blatant 0871 should be barred from receiving money for there use.

One of my favourites is carphone warehouse - they have a national number for each individual store!

K

rygon

The way i see it..If someone rings up and im out then if it was that important they will ring me back. saves being caught out by these scams

Midget_Karen

I just wanted to flag this up again - i've been called by 5 slightly different 0704 numbers in the last 3 days, but never been on the line more than 1 second before being cut off. I didn't realise the numbers were different - i only really noticed that the first few digits were similar and unusual.

I haven't had my bill yet but i'm sure these will show up on there as a scam, so please if you get an 0704 number calling, don't answer it!