Hacked phone number/Virgin Media

LittlePhish

Virgin Media are doing my head in at the moment, and I hope somebody has some advice before I head down to their main offices with a blowtorch!

I recently negotiated a package with Virgin because I was going to go to Sky -- after our 12 month contract with Virgin expired in February, we got a bill for three times what we had been charged under the initial contract! After talking to Sky, and then to BT to see if there had ever been a BT line in our flat, I discovered that I would have to pay about £125 to put a BT line in, and so I called Virgin and told them I was leaving if they wouldn't price-match with Sky.

After some negotiation, I got from Virgin what I was going to get from Sky, without the cost of putting a BT line in. I verified that the cost wasn't going to triple at the end of the contract, and requested that they NOTIFY me before the contract ended so that I could ensure that I renewed it in time to avoid their basic, expensive rates on everything. Just FYI, we are getting a TV/broadband/phone package with sports and movies and lots of bandwidth, and the total monthly bill is SUPPOSED to be £61.50 a month.

Well.

When I spoke to Virgin to negotiate the package, I also questioned some calls that we were charged for on that nasty £160 bill. It appeared that on that bill, we had made a bunch of calls to 118118 for 1, 2, 4 and 5 minutes! Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm a somewhat ignorant American), but isn't 118118 a directory enquiry number? Who calls directory enquiry for FIVE MINUTES?!

Also on that bill were a couple of calls to mobile numbers which we flat out didn't make. My partner is on dialysis three days a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9 AM until 1:30 or 2:00 PM, and doesn't get home usually until about 3 or 3:30 PM. I work 9 to 5, Monday through Friday. These calls were made when we simply weren't home!

We have no children, and nobody else has access to our phone. Unless our cats have suddenly gotten VERY clever, NOBODY MADE THOSE CALLS!!

The other day we got our first bill on the new package. The cheaper one, right? (Snort) So here's how they broke it down:

Advance charges:
Telephone line rental 2May-1June £11.00 (I'm okay with this)
Talk Evenings and Weekends 3.45 (okay)
Talk International 1.50 (yep, fine)
Sports and Movies packs 25.00 (yep)
TV Size: XL 20.50 (okay)
Broadband Size: L 25.00 (yeah, but... well, okay)
Loyalty Pack B B, PhoneTV3D Sky -24.95 (woohooo!)

The total for all of that, which I'm pretty much okay with, comes to £61.50, which is what I agreed to when I called, so that's all fine. I was actually kind of amused that they apparently have a standard "loyalty" package for customers who threaten to go to Sky.

But wait. The total bill is £94.92! Huh??

So I pore over the bill more carefully. There's a Payment Handling Charge of £5.00 -- what's this for? We pay by direct debit, on time, every month. But it's only £5. We can handle that, as long as it's not us being charged for something we don't use or receive or require.

I keep looking -- and lo and behold, despite all the damn phone packages we're paying for, there are £34.23 in calls!!

Hmmm... okay, wait. These are for calls made before the new contract was negotiated. So I guess it's okay, because when the old contract expired we apparently went to a "Talk 200" plan which charges for all usage past 200 free minutes a month. I glance over the numbers.

WHAT?! Of the calls on this bill, there are 47 calls made for a total of 80 minutes that are under 50p each -- £9.59. Those aren't itemised, so I can't see if we recognise the numbers. Then there are the 7 calls that were OVER 50p.

There's another of those 118118 calls that we didn't make -- we simply NEVER CALL directory enquiry. EVER. Besides which, it's for 10:25 PM on a Thursday night, by which time I'm generally reading in bed, and my partner is falling asleep in front of the TV. We just do not call people that late at night. EVER. Certainly not somebody whose number we would have to get from directory enquiry!

Of the other six calls, only ONE was to a number we might have called, at a time when we might have actually been in the flat.

Remember I told you that I work 9 to 5, Monday through Friday, and my partner has dialysis Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and doesn't get home until around 3:30 on those days? Right. Well the most infuriating of these calls was to a mobile number (I tried calling the number just to find out who it was, on the off chance that we HAD actually called the number, and the man was aggressive, rude and frankly I wonder if he somehow hacked onto our phone line. He wouldn't even tell me his name). The call was made at 1:02 PM on a Monday -- nobody home but the cats! -- and it lasted for 69 minutes! £8.87 for one phone call that we didn't make!!

The rest of the calls over 50p aren't that bad -- the second most expensive was that directory enquiry call we didn't make, for 7 minutes, which cost £2.08. There were a couple of longer calls, but they weren't as costly. It really doesn't matter that they weren't terribly expensive -- we did not make these calls! How is this happening?!

We checked all of the numbers. Again, I swear that we did NOT MAKE THESE CALLS!! The total for phone calls, including VAT, is £34.23. It makes the affordable £61.50 which I negotiated UNAFFORDABLE! My partner receives benefits because she is disabled due to kidney disease, and I make less than £9.00 per hour.

So here's my question: How is it that someone is obviously billing calls to our phone number that we did not make, and how can I make it stop -- and how can I get Virgin to credit these calls?

The calls are sort of grouped: one on 24th March (the longest one), two on 26th March, two on 27th March, then a couple of less grouped ones in April.
Looks suspicious to me.

It's sort of ironic, actually. My name on these forums is Little Phish. If you know anything about hacking, you'll know that "phishing" is the illegal practice of hacking account numbers, etc., by somehow attaching yourself to someone else's internet or telephone account. This is NOT where my forum name came from -- it's a sort of inside (and somewhat nasty) joke between my partner (Limey Phish, the British lesbian) and myself. Nothing at all to do with hacking. Funny, huh? (not really)

Can anyone help me? Please?? I'm really concerned that this is going to continue and get worse if I don't get a handle on it right now!

Heinz

Cut your losses, dump cable and get the BT line put in - there's a £29.99 installation offer at the moment.

LittlePhish

...and thus, will still be hacked, won't it? No matter what carrier we use?

Besides which, unfortunately (upon hindsight) I agreed to a one-year contract with Virgin, so we're stuck with them.

Does anyone have any idea if we've actually had someone hacking our number? If there's a way that I can prove something to Virgin, maybe they'll be more willing to credit the charges back to us.

Thanks for the suggestion, though! :j

bigmig

LittlePhish,

This does not help you but i thought i would share that we have a problem with our Virgin phone line and we feel we are banging our heads against a brick wall. Their customer service has been a shambles.

To cut a long story short they tried to fix a dial tone failure but now if we call our home number we are routed to the number of a complete stranger in London! It turns out that VM had the wrong address for us and because of this it will take a further 4 weeks before an engineer can be called! Astonishing! Our private calls are being sent to a strangers house.

I have tried several of their staff on the general customer "support" line and they have been of no use. I called on the cancellation number and that seemed to allow me to speak to a more efficient person but he was not able to help in the end.

Please let me know how you rectify this issue. I myself am planning to take action against VM for the problems we have faced.

Good luck
mig

Heinz

LittlePhish wrote: »

...and thus, will still be hacked, won't it? No matter what carrier we use?

Cable (Virgin Media) and ordinary landlines (BT etc.) are completely separate systems.

BTW, it sounds like the errors are occurring in VM's accounting department rather than involving a physical interception of your line.

normanmark

LittlePhish wrote: »

It's sort of ironic, actually. My name on these forums is Little Phish. If you know anything about hacking, you'll know that "phishing" is the illegal practice of hacking account numbers, etc., by somehow attaching yourself to someone else's internet or telephone account. This is NOT where my forum name came from -- it's a sort of inside (and somewhat nasty) joke between my partner (Limey Phish, the British lesbian) and myself. Nothing at all to do with hacking. Funny, huh? (not really)

Can anyone help me? Please?? I'm really concerned that this is going to continue and get worse if I don't get a handle on it right now!

First of all, loose the paranoia. In order for any 'hacking' to be carried out it needs to be carried on the physical line as opposed to getting your account number and doing it from there.

Whilst its not ideal given the situation, in order for Virgin to credit your account you need to have the proof that no one in the household has made these calls. Looking at it from their point of view is anyone literally could ask for credit back on their calls by saying they didn't make them.

What i would do is highlight the calls made in a letter & ask Virgin to investigate these on your behalf to give you as much information as possible. Better still call the mobile numbers to find out who they are?

BexTech

Heinz wrote: »

Cut your losses, dump cable and get the BT line put in - there's a £29.99 installation offer at the moment.

Sky have been refunding BT's line rental, if you move services to them.

BexTech

Spending 5 minutes on 118118 could be due to the person using 118118 asking them to connect the call instead of just noting down the number and dialling themselves. Calls are rounded up to the nearest minute.

alanq

Do you have a cordless phone? These things aren't supposed to happen but could someone be connecting via your cordless phone base station?

acer1751

Hi,

I have had the same problem with Virgin but with only a few "extra" calls, albeit to premium rate numbers.

Response from Virgin was "you have to pay it, the system says you dialled the number". Great. I was in Belgium and my partner was at work.

Just wondering how to proceed. I do have a cordless phone so could it have been hacked or should I blame an admin error at Virgin?

LittlePhish

To answer some of the questions I've been asked:

Yes, we have a cordless phone.

We've requested an audit of our number, and requested and received a detailed accounting of the numbers for all the calls under 50p which are not itemized on our normal bill to see if any of the big money (sort of) calls that we don't recognise are numbers which we actually called more than once. Answer to that -- no.

We've called a couple of the mobile numbers to see who they were, and were greeted with mostly hostility -- people not wanting to give out such "sensitive" information to a stranger over the phone (snort). No voices we recognised.

We've also RECEIVED a number of such calls, none of which we could help (none of which we could recall ever calling).

We're deep into the investigation, matching up numbers from my partner's mobile bill (Orange) to numbers on the Virgin bill -- with very little luck, and with Virgin double checking our line. I hadn't even thought of it being an accounting error. I suppose I could get proof from my work and my partner's dialysis unit that we were not home for some of the calls, but at this point I really doubt that Virgin gives a hoot. We'll wind up paying for the calls just to keep them from shutting our service off for non-payment.

sigh.