Orange - Call charges of £2,500!!!

OrangeHelp

Hi espresso..

Re Phone.. will check I'll check with Orange the IMEI nos.

Re SIM .. The last time my husband was in UK was last Sept... As he has a work Polish mobile he does not switch on his UK mobile when in Poland. It was only when in Feb we received this horrendous bill that we contacted Orange and it was only on Friday last that Orange asked us to open the phone to check the SIM card. As mentioned before, as far as we are concerned the phone and the SIM are the original from prob. 8 years or so ago. You see.. that's why we can't understand why, if calls are from our phone, they aren't the calls showing as international.

Re the handset - making and receiving calls... We only discovered this over the weekend when we switched the phone on - after Orange told us that the SIM card was not registered. We thought that if we switched it on then we maybe able to be the phone number for assigned to that SIM ( as we haven't used it for absolutely ages, this was the first time the handset has actually been switched on, )...

Re expert advice - any idea where we would go for this?
When we asked Orange about taking it further through the Telecommunications Ombudsman ( otelo.ork.uk ) and CISAS - they said that as Orange did not class this as fraud nether of these bodies would be interested and our only cause would be to take legal action... Can you advise if this is the case or is there somewhere else we can go?

espresso

Sorry other than trying to get this resolved via [EMAIL="executive.office@orange.co.uk"]executive.office@orange.co.uk[/EMAIL] I don't really know what more I can say. It does seem strange to take this mobile abroad, if he never switches it on there and the call activity does sound very odd. Perhaps Orange now just want to get customers off these no line rental tariffs!

Woby_Tide

from the info you are slowly providing it does sound like the card has been cloned and replaced(the fact your husbands UK phone no longer works indicates teh SIM perhaps isn't the one you have had in it for 8 years). As you haven't been aware it's been 'stolen' it is harsh that you have been unable to report it so youc ould well be liable for it, on the other hand if he never uses the phone whilst abroad and it isn't switched on for over 8 months it sort of begs the question why take the risk of having a phone you never use out there with him?

OrangeHelp

Hi.. Thanks for all comments/advice... Re taking it out UK - he was travelling fortnighty over the past few years and required the UK mobile at airports and whilst travelling through UK, it then stayed with him in Poland pending his return - seems reasonable. Had never expected/anticipated anything like this.

I just wish that Orange would investigate a bit further ( ie who the calls are to and where from ie location of handset ) but for some reason they seem reluctant to do this - Does anyone know if we can force them to do this? And if so how we go about this.

Espresso - I will contact Orange executive. Thanks for all the advice.

espresso

OrangeHelp wrote: »

Espresso - I will contact Orange executive. Thanks for all the advice.

They seem to be the best option to resolve dispute situations. Best of luck and please do report back.

OrangeHelp

Espresso, Thanks so much.... Until later - keep fingers crossed..

KittyKate

Hi, I work in telecoms and know quite a bit on this. Firstly, orange are doing no-where near enough to help you.

Tell them you dispute the payment as you never made the phone calls and ask them in writing to pass it to their fraud department. Stealing a phone and using it is fraud, stealing a sim is also fraud.

Technically there is more they can do to prove the fraud. I worked for o2 but I'm sure orange is practically identical - when you make a call the mobile registers on the nearest cell tower (usually in a mile radius, in a city). Ask orange to provide information as to the location of the sim when the calls were made.

Secondly the IMEI. Even if the sim has been cloned it is unlikely the IMEI has. By running a simple program (at o2 it is called ABS) you can see what phone IMEI, make, model is being used with that sim. You can also check all previous sims which have been put in that card *and* all the phones the sim has been in. If someone has cloned the sim and is using their own sim + the stolen one then they will be easy to catch.

Finally if you report the fraud to the police they will take it seriously and they are able to get the info on the numbers called, find out what they are, and even check on your husband's polish mobile/your mobile/your landline to see if you have ever called them before, they can look at the nature of the call, speak to the recipient etc. If you get a crime reference no orange HAVE to investigate so don't give up! HTH!!

OrangeHelp

Dear Kitty Kate

Thank you, thank you, thank you..!!!
At least now I know what questions to ask and what to do. Having no dealings with anything like this before we didn't have a clue and just felt Orange were fobbing us off and certainly not investigating it ( despite them assuring us they were ).

Again, my thanks.