Virgin Media

cazbarfeatures

Hi,

We recently received our VM bill and they have charged us for 3 calls made to an 0908 number which we never made. They are insisting that it was made from our house but we were both at work and we use BT for calls anyway. We only use VM for Broadband and Cable TV.

I'm not technical in any way but someone mentioned about Bluetooth and someone could have picked up our signal and made the calls.

The bill is for £30 and it's and adult chat line. We can prove that we were both at work but the thing that is annoying me the most is the fact that we don't use them for our phonecalls and they don't seem to believe us.

Any advice please?

thanks
Caz

tukki-tukki

if you use BT for calls. It has nothing to do with VM unless you have VOIP (Voice over Internet protocol) e.g kind of a bit like skype. But that would be charged under your broadband usage. Is this a separate bill with the calls or all in one with your broadband and cable.

I think if you press the red button on cable on some channels you can be charged for doing things, maybe its that.

I would ring VM up and say look here i don't have you for my phonecalls. Look on your fantastic IT system and it will tell you. Now why have i been charged for these calls?

donnajunkie

can you be 100% sure no-one has made the call or watched a pay for adult channel? it is the kind of thing people wont own up about. saying that though i have sometimes suspected that they have charged us for calls we havent made or for calls on a weekend that are supposed to be free. as we are too lazy to keep record we cant be sure. it is harder when our bill isnt itemised.

shaf00uk

My advice would be to dispute this as much as you can. If you don't have a line then you don't pay. Virgin Media run three seperate cables for each service so I can't see why you should pay anything if you are with BT.

If you make calls through the internet it counts towards your usage.

If you never make premium rate calls put in a request to BT (and Virgin Media) to block outbound calls that are premium rate. I can do that with my mobile phone (Virgin Mobile incidently) - I can't see why this can't be done on a fixed line. Hope this helps.

Anthillmob

Run a virus check on your PC.. you may have picked up a trojan/virus with a "dialler" which can dial these numbers without your knowledge. Also if you have a wireless network make sure it's secure as hackers may be able to steal your bandwith and do the same..

banger9365

Anthillmob wrote: »

Run a virus check on your PC.. you may have picked up a trojan/virus with a "dialler" which can dial these numbers without your knowledge. Also if you have a wireless network make sure it's secure as hackers may be able to steal your bandwith and do the same..

it cannot happen if you do not have a modem in your pc and connected to a phone line
there on cable bb so the dialler will not work
again it cannot happen Voice over Internet protocol to adult chat line ,if you have not got the software how can you ring the number and credit,vm do's not suppy the means for voip it 3rd party software

so it the vm phone or the tv box thats rang the number or gone on to one of the adult chat line/sites(tv box can do it and it costs)

cazbarfeatures

Thank you one and all.

I know what some of you may be thinking that the hubby popped home and did it and doesn't want to own up to it or being a female you think I wouldn't want to own up to it.

However, I can categorically say we were both at work that day all day. My OH works a fair distance from home so it's not a case of popping home and we both have clock cards that prove we weren't at home that day. The only other person in our house is our 4 year old and he was at nursery.

They have made a mistake or someone has managed to hack in. Although we do have Norton virus protection software and good idea about the premium numbers blocking. We are wireless too.

Along with the phonecalls I have also written a letter to them disputing this.

Wish me luck

Thanks
Caz

SPANIEL36

Good Luck!!......

hc25036

Try posting on the forum at www.cableforum.co.uk. Lots of helpful Virginmedia experts there.

Even if you don't use it, Virgin TV does come with an active phone line and there have been cases of these being hacked. Sort it out now or you may get a nasty surpriese in future.

cazbarfeatures

I have just spoken to VM and asked for the premium rate telephone nos. to be blocked and they wanted to charge us £1.75 a month but I said that I wasn't prepared to pay for that because we don't ring those type of numbers and it's to prevent this problem happening again. He let me have it free of charge.

donnajunkie

i presume no-one else has a key to your house?