Stolen SIM card racks up £520 bill in 2 days

Liam_Beatty

Hi everyone,

I recently got my phone stolen but thought i had lost it so i did not report it for around 48 hours as i thought i might find it. I went on my Orange online account to check that the phone wasn't being used and nothing was shown on my account as they do not update for 48 hours.
I phoned up Orange 48 hours after losing my phone to block my phone and sim and they informed me that my sim card was being used in another phone. Once my online account updated a few days later it showed my phone had been used a LOT to call a foreign country which i worked out to be Algeria. They had racked up £480 worth of calls to this country in just 2 days!
Orange tell me that i am responsible for all calls made until i report it lost or stolen so i have to pay the HUGE bill. I find this extremely unfair as i have never phoned a foreign country before and have never been more than £5 over my £35/month iPhone tariff. I have also been with Orange for 3 years and always paid in full on time. They say they will set up a payment plan for me but this is not good enough as i still have to pay the money.
Does anybody know how i could possibly get Orange to either reduce or completely take away the extra charges and just pay my normal £35 a month as it is clearly shown on my call log?
All help would be greatly appreciated, thankyou.

Rusty!

This is standard practice for all operators. Until you report the phone stolen, you are responsible for any calls made.

grumbler

Liam_Beatty wrote: »

...I find this extremely unfair .

Why? May be harsh, but not unfair IMO.
Besides reporting it lost more promptly you could have taken some preventive actions, like protecting the sim card with a PIN.

P.S. Even insurances cover unauthorised calls only up to a certain limit, say £100.

JJ_Egan

Fair yes otherwise other Orange users have to foot the bill .

As to your past record of never phoning a foreign number that if accepted would be an easy get out for anyone that decides to actually use the phone to dial abroad . Not me guv my records show i never phoned my Uncle in OZ .

Its very apparent that mobile users are having to pay over the odds to subsidise the i lost my phone my phone used xxx data and i dont know why i have been charged for roaming users .

jje

custardy

you can call orange for a lost phone(even if you suspect you may find it) and they can 'soft' block it
so if you find it you can get get it reactivated

Liam_Beatty

I have never been informed that there are ways of putting a PIN number on your SIM card.... I had a PIN number to get into my phone but they just took it out and put it into a converter and used it in a Nokia phone.
You would think that they would have similar methods to credit cards whereby sudden usage abroad would trigger a warning and block the call. I have subsequently now blocked my sim card from being able to call international numbers which i think they should offer you when you sign up to your contract.
I'm just hoping that Orange do a gesture of goodwill and split the bill with me as this has happened in some similar cases, fingers crossed

macman

Liam_Beatty wrote: »

I have never been informed that there are ways of putting a PIN number on your SIM card.... I had a PIN number to get into my phone but they just took it out and put it into a converter and used it in a Nokia phone.
You would think that they would have similar methods to credit cards whereby sudden usage abroad would trigger a warning and block the call. I have subsequently now blocked my sim card from being able to call international numbers which i think they should offer you when you sign up to your contract.
I'm just hoping that Orange do a gesture of goodwill and split the bill with me as this has happened in some similar cases, fingers crossed

Define 'sudden usage' please?
You now see why this is impractical.
Lots of people legitimately make overseas calls all the time and do not want their phones blocked.
All SIM's can be PIN protected and always have been so enabled.

Liam_Beatty

In reply to the above post about 'sudden usage' i mean i have been with Orange for 3 years now and i have never made a phone call to an international number. Once my phone and sim were stolen, they called a large number of different international numbers for all different periods of time, which is something i have never done. The calls were being made at all times of the day for 2 days straight until i blocked it.
I also have a few numbers that i call/text every single day (e.g. to my partner) and i suddenly stopped calling/texting all of these numbers...

custardy

you can malign Orange all day long but you had it in your power to call them and stop the phone
been a while since i read an Orange manual but I would expect it likely covers sim/phone locks

Sponge

macman wrote: »

Define 'sudden usage' please?
You now see why this is impractical.
Lots of people legitimately make overseas calls all the time and do not want their phones blocked.
All SIM's can be PIN protected and always have been so enabled.

Impractical? How so? If credit card companies can manage it and their users can live with it, then I'm damned sure mobile phone companies and their customers can. But then there's no incentive for them, is there. They make a tidy profit from situations like this and that comes before helping customers.

macman

If you never made international calls, then why didn't you have them blocked anyway? The default is to let you call anyone you like. Just because you've never made an international call, doesn't mean you'll never do so-are the network supposed to block it on that basis?
The networks process billions of call every day, they can't monitor who is calling/texting whom!
And if the phone/SIM is stolen or used abroad, the roaming network may not pass the charges back to the home network for several days, by which time it's too late anyway.
It's the customer's responsibility to cancel as soon as the phone is stolen or missing.