Stolen SIM card racks up £520 bill in 2 days

grumbler

Liam_Beatty wrote: »

I have never been informed that there are ways of putting a PIN number on your SIM card....

Who should have informed you? You'll find this information in any manual or even a quick start guide.
In my phone settings I have options for protecting both the phone and the sim ('set up sim card lock').

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.

Next time they will call premium numbers or personal pay-for numbers. It's a known scam to have a pay-for numbers registered on their names and to steal the phones only for dialing this number(s) and then leaving the phone connected until the sim gets blocked.

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

Good luck (honestly!).

Liam_Beatty

I didn't block international calls because i hadn't forseen that my phone would be stolen and used to call abroad...

On the PIN for your SIM card then at least i now know for future SIM cards to create this PIN block, which i thank you for bringing this to my attention as i still wouldn't have known about it.

Hopefully others who read this blog (and myself) will be able to learn from the mistakes i have made here and others won't have to be stuck in the predicament i find myself in

wantmemoney

@Liam Beatty,
some Algerian 'international' numbers are in fact used for premium rate billing.
Orange do have a system in place to monitor abnormal call patterns. They use it to monitor AIT (Artificial Inflated Traffic) and protect themselves from this type of fraud.
Unfortunately it's 'turned off' if they see the account belongs to a genuine bill paying customer

MyRubyRed

My advice to anyone would be to contact your service provider and cancel your sim as soon as you realise your phone is missing. They can block the handset also which renders it useless to anyone if the block is put in place quickly.

Guys_Dad

I like the way you have, through the course of this thread, taken on board the point about your liability until you reported the theft and acknowledged the point about the pin lock and wrote

"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"

Recognising that any reduction would be goodwill is half the battle to guiding your negotiations with Orange and actually achieving any reduction. You will have much more success, I have found, in accepting personal liability and asking for goodwill, than ranting, as some people have done, and blaming the network.

As for the point about overseas calling, people's habits change. What if one of your relatives had fallen ill when abroad and you needed to contact them urgently? Frankly, no network is staffed sufficiently to react to every change in callers' habits by either trying to contact them direct or blocking the sim automatically. And sending out a text asking if you were aware that your overseas calls would be expensive or asking for a confirmation text back - the thief would simply text back "OK".

hello2007

Liam_Beatty wrote: »

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.

I had my iphone stolen a couple of months ago and the first thing that I did was block my phone so that I did not end up with a big phone bill.

To be on the safe side you should have block your phone right away because if you had found the phone it would have been very easy to get Orange to unblock.

Liam_Beatty

@Guys Dad - Thanks for the advice, i imagine they would be much more willing to negotiate if i accept my mistakes but ask for their sympathy rather than ranting and raving at them, plus, at the end of the day the person on the end of the phone is only working to the rules they have been given, so if i hurl abuse at them they will, understandably, rather not do everything they can to help you out.
You also have a good point about if a relative fell ill and that a text could just be replied to by the thief....

Thanks for all of the comments they are all being taken on board and if anyone else has more ideas/comments on what i could do they would be appreciated

Liam_Beatty

wantmemoney wrote: »

@Liam Beatty,
some Algerian 'international' numbers are in fact used for premium rate billing.
Orange do have a system in place to monitor abnormal call patterns. They use it to monitor AIT (Artificial Inflated Traffic) and protect themselves from this type of fraud.
Unfortunately it's 'turned off' if they see the account belongs to a genuine bill paying customer

Is there a way of blocking calls to these types of numbers?

Thanks

wantmemoney

Liam_Beatty wrote:

some Algerian 'international' numbers are in fact used for premium rate billing.

Is there a way of blocking calls to these types of numbers?

to block international audiotext numbers you have to block all international numbers.

international premium rate numbers are just normal international numbers that 'companies' use to bill for premium rate services.
the main difference is they are not terminated on a domestic phone in that country but may well be short stopped in London for example.

the Networks are fully aware of the blocks of international numbers being used for revenue share fraud :cool:

dannyboyroberts

That sounds really unfair . I would get watchdog