Has anyone experienced identity fraud with Three Mobile? (I have)

kateshapes

Hi! Long-time lurker, first time poster... :wave:

So, I'm asking as I've just discovered that someone has been using a sim card that's linked to my Three account for the past TWO YEARS and I've been paying for it...

It's a long story, but basically what happened was: 1) my mum was paying for my contract; 2) in 2017 I transferred the contract to my name, got a new phone but kept the same sim; 3) I have been paying for what I thought was this contract monthly ever since, but recently found that my mum has also been paying this whole time; 4) after speaking with Three over many, many phone calls :wall:, finally discovered that a new sim had been assigned to my account when I got the new phone in 2017, and someone has been using it ever since (I also saw that for the past few months, the bill had rocketed to around £170 a month :eek: ). I had never used this new sim and I do not recognise the number (it is not in my contacts or the contacts of people I know).

I have filed a formal complaint and am pursuing this at the moment through the police (Action Fraud) and will be approaching the ombudsman service once I receive some paperwork from Three, however, so far Three have said that they will not issue any refund.

As a writer by trade, I am planning on investigating what happened here in an article. What I would love to know is, have you ever experienced fraud with Three? How did they handle it? I'd really like to have some further examples to include in my article, covering things like what to look out for (best practice), how to pursue claims (useful links), personal stories and how Three treated you through the whole process etc. You get the idea

If you have any experience of this or something similar, please, please get in touch – I'm happy to keep names anonymous if need be. Thank you!

Exemplar

What articles have you published?

kateshapes

@Exemplar a bit of all sorts, depending on the area I'm working on at the time – currently this is around PR, so my latest is a post for GamesIndustry interviewing people about doing public relations in gaming. Before that it was more about entrepreneurship and finance, online and offline, for various publications though often ghostwritten rather than bylined. Otherwise I have been features editor for a Commonwealth magazine, chief editor for an in-house investing magazine, desk and copy editor for a handful of books etc.

Unhelpfully I have had to remove all links from this post as because I've just signed up to the forum, and "Sorry as a new user you are not allowed to post with links. This is done to stop spammers clogging up the site. Please edit your message below to continue."

It sounds like you've had an interesting experience that I'd be curious to learn about :j please do share!

[Deleted User]

kateshapes wrote: »

Hi! Long-time lurker, first time poster... :wave:

So, I'm asking as I've just discovered that someone has been using a sim card that's linked to my Three account for the past TWO YEARS and I've been paying for it...

It's a long story, but basically what happened was: 1) my mum was paying for my contract; 2) in 2017 I transferred the contract to my name, got a new phone but kept the same sim; 3) I have been paying for what I thought was this contract monthly ever since, but recently found that my mum has also been paying this whole time; 4) after speaking with Three over many, many phone calls :wall:, finally discovered that a new sim had been assigned to my account when I got the new phone in 2017, and someone has been using it ever since (I also saw that for the past few months, the bill had rocketed to around £170 a month :eek: ). I had never used this new sim and I do not recognise the number (it is not in my contacts or the contacts of people I know).

I have filed a formal complaint and am pursuing this at the moment through the police (Action Fraud) and will be approaching the ombudsman service once I receive some paperwork from Three, however, so far Three have said that they will not issue any refund.

As a writer by trade, I am planning on investigating what happened here in an article. What I would love to know is, have you ever experienced fraud with Three? How did they handle it? I'd really like to have some further examples to include in my article, covering things like what to look out for (best practice), how to pursue claims (useful links), personal stories and how Three treated you through the whole process etc. You get the idea

If you have any experience of this or something similar, please, please get in touch – I'm happy to keep names anonymous if need be. Thank you!

Are you just doing a hatchet job on Three or all mobile companies? (I've no direct experience myself).

covering things like what to look out for (best practice)

Checking your bank account more often than every 2 years would be a start. How do you miss £170 a month going out for a few months BTW?

mobilejunkie

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

Are you just doing a hatchet job on Three or all mobile companies? (I've no direct experience myself).

Checking your bank account more often than every 2 years would be a start. How do you miss £170 a month going out for a few months BTW?

I think their article would be much more useful if it targeted that; it seems there are a lot of people who don't check their statements for years and then complain about being "ripped" off. Something very basic, univeral and simple to avoid. Stopping the leak when you know it's there is rather better than dealing with the consequences at a much later date - especially since it's much easier than checking the pipes and taps in this case.

kateshapes

Checking your bank account more often than every 2 years would be a start. How do you miss £170 a month going out for a few months BTW?

It's an account I use solely for direct debits, so only check it after a new one has been set up and I want to make sure it's going out correctly. Since the amount agreed for my mobile contract was going out every month, attributed to my phone service provider, everything looked legit. It only went into ridiculous figures at the end of 2019. In addition, the Three app on my phone was linked to my old sim (the one I was using), so at a glance showed the same* amount going out every month as my bank statement (* reviewing, there's a few pence difference, but nothing you'd notice unless you had reason to be suspicious).

I think their article would be much more useful if it targeted that

Perhaps, for me it depends on the scope of information I get access to – I don't want to write a book here. If I have enough for a good narrative using Three as the main example (other providers would still be referenced, but in less detail), then I'll go with that; if more useful stories emerge across providers, then I'll expand the scope that way, though word limits would likely mean the article has less depth.

There is certainly something to be said about paperless billing etc, the trade-off between the convenience of having everything logged digitally vs the likelihood that you'll regularly assess these apps – more likely, you'll only log on and check something when you need to.

mobilejunkie

I avoid using apps. I check my main bank entries daily - sometimes more - others about weekly (those are the ones with fewer dd, not more) and mobile, gas/credit card statements as soon as they are available each month. Where possible (i.e. without paying for them) I also get paper statements. It's virtually impossible for an incorrect direct debit or an incorrect amount to go out without my knowing the same day - and I have more complicated financial affairs and accounts than the vast majority of people.

There are enough threads on here started by people who have noticed unexpected amounts going out on their mobile accounts and bank accounts, not realising they failed to cancel a contract because they assumed it ended naturally among other reasons) for years on end. I recall a recent one was over 13 years - amazing and (to me) ridiculous, but apparently it happens regularly on all networks for a variety of reasons (and quite likely with other services and products such as energy, various subscriptions and so on - not an area I go to on here but if it happens with mobile contracts it must happen a lot there too, methinks).

It seems that the basics aren't followed by quite a lot of people and that repeats itself. It wouldn't need to be a long article to give examples from here and set out some basic groundrules to avoid the traps (given the high cost of finding them a long way down the line). In fact, I'd have thought it would be somewhat easier to fit into a short article than the huge area of fraud on mobile accounts - and possibly rather more useful, since simple things would prevent a lot of that anyway. I wrote a guide on here in 2007 for mobile cashback contracts (even though the tripwires were much more effective then and loads of cashback deals made a profit every time) and the groundrules still apply today. That seemed to help a lot of people (there will always be those who fall foul, even now with easier t&c); sometimes simple but sound rules and steps can save a lot of grief later. I'm not so sure what an article specific on Three's experience would achieve - except for going to back checking statements and not assuming everything is fine without looking. Hey - but that's just me.

kateshapes

@mobilejunkie That's really interesting – I like the idea of this branching out into a more general article about the use of apps/digital forms of finance management, how much people check these things, whether people are actually interested in checking these things (so, attitudes towards financial management by age, perhaps?), practical advice on security and safeguarding, the place of challenger banks (and other money-management apps) in all of this, how technology is trying to automate everything to make it easier and more manageable (how is it succeeding/failing?) and so on. Thank you also for the tip of trawling the MSE forums for case studies –!I'll certainly be doing that.

The reason for using real-world examples is simply that personal narratives make copy more interesting, more convincing and make more people care – after all, most people are far more likely to read something entertaining than they are something good for them (else they'd all be on here!). This is likely similar to the reason these things continue to happen: we would rather spend our Sunday evenings doing anything but looking through our finances. And I won't lie, the exercise will also be a bit cathartic for me after going through the seemingly endless catch-22 of mobile provider bureaucracy ("I'm sorry, your mother can't access the account because she has assigned the account to you. Yes, you can access it, but only if you confirm your mother's bank account number and bank statement references." etc)

[Deleted User]

kateshapes wrote: »

It's an account I use solely for direct debits, so only check it after a new one has been set up and I want to make sure it's going out correctly. Since the amount agreed for my mobile contract was going out every month, attributed to my phone service provider, everything looked legit. It only went into ridiculous figures at the end of 2019. In addition, the Three app on my phone was linked to my old sim (the one I was using), so at a glance showed the same* amount going out every month as my bank statement (* reviewing, there's a few pence difference, but nothing you'd notice unless you had reason to be suspicious)...

Don't take this the wrong way but I'd have thought that an account set up purely for DD's (a good idea obviously) would make it easier to spot problems as long as you check it every week or two. After all, it should be the same repeating charges so any break in the pattern should jump out. I look at is as being akin to having a padlock on your shed but never closing it, eventually you'll get robbed.

I missed the fact that your mother was still paying as otherwise you'd have had two payments coming out. That said, slap her wrist for me for not noticing and wondering why she was still paying for your phone

kateshapes wrote: »

...Thank you also for the tip of trawling the MSE forums for case studies –!I'll certainly be doing that.

The reason for using real-world examples is simply that personal narratives make copy more interesting...

Just be aware that you most probably won't get the full story and be wary of what you write re. the libel laws.