Someone has racked up £300 of calls and i have to pay

willoc

About 2 weeks ago i lost my phone, it wasnt till later on next day that i realised i couldnt find it so i barred it. My phone provider Orange gave me a new phone as i was due an upgrade and i got to keep my number...all seemed good.

Until yesterday, when i received my bill and found it that in the time i had lost it and had it working someone had racke dup £300 worth of international calls on it. I rung up Orange to explain and all they had to say was that i was liable and have to pay the full amount. I find this unexceptable as the calls where not made by me and i didnt know it was stolen.

I didnt have phone insurance with Orange because lets face it, its just not worth it but i only found out today that my bank account covers mobiles. They have said that because i didnt make the claim in 48hrs i may not be able to claim but i can try.

Do any of you have any advice?? I'm just not prepared to pay a mobile bill that would be more than a year and a halfs worth on calls i didnt make.

Thanks

Leopard

willoc wrote: »

About 2 weeks ago i lost my phone, it wasnt till later on next day that i realised i couldnt find it so i barred it. My phone provider Orange gave me a new phone as i was due an upgrade and i got to keep my number...all seemed good.

Until yesterday, when i received my bill and found it that in the time i had lost it and had it working someone had racke dup £300 worth of international calls on it. I rung up Orange to explain and all they had to say was that i was liable and have to pay the full amount. I find this unexceptable as the calls where not made by me and i didnt know it was stolen.

I didnt have phone insurance with Orange because lets face it, its just not worth it but i only found out today that my bank account covers mobiles. They have said that because i didnt make the claim in 48hrs i may not be able to claim but i can try.

Do any of you have any advice?? I'm just not prepared to pay a mobile bill that would be more than a year and a halfs worth on calls i didnt make.

Thanks

Orange didn't know who was making the calls, either, and had no way of knowing that it was stolen until you reported it.

If you'd had the insurance, it would indeed have been worth it.

espresso

willoc wrote: »

About 2 weeks ago i lost my phone, it wasnt till later on next day that i realised i couldnt find it so i barred it..............

If you lost your wallet with £300 in it, would you expect Orange to be liable for that as well.

:rolleyes:

proplusplus

Leopard wrote: »

Orange didn't know who was making the calls, either, and had no way of knowing that it was stolen until you reported it.

If you'd had the insurance, it would indeed have been worth it.

Orange Care (orange mobile insurance), and indeed most other network mobile insurances, cover the item lost, but not the call charges incurred.

proplusplus

Leopard

proplusplus wrote: »

Orange Care (orange mobile insurance), and indeed most other network mobile insurances, cover the item lost, but not the call charges incurred.

proplusplus

Thanks for the correction.

agsnu

espresso wrote: »

If you lost your wallet with £300 in it, would you expect Orange to be liable for that as well.

:rolleyes:

This is a completely disingenuous argument. If you lost your wallet with your credit card in it, and your credit card was used fraudulently to the tune of £300, would you expect your credit card company to be liable for that? Yes, you would.

Orange has not lost £300. They are profiting off the thief's criminal misuse of your phone.

willoc

Exactly...Orange Care isnt worth it cos phone's arent worth that much money anymore...i'm not bothered about the phone but just the calls.

Cavey

Soooo.... if you do not call abroad (and why would you with the prices) contact your service provider and have outgoing international calls barred. I also don't use premium (09xx) numbers, so I have them barred, ditto to reverse charged texts. If you don't use it and don't plan on using, why leave your phone capable of incurring these costs?

If your phone allows you to pin lock your phone, why not make use of it so that if anyone wants to use it they need to know your PIN? It's a pain, but it could save you £x00.

And while I agree with agsnu's analogy, it's still not quite correct....

modified_(after_agsnu) wrote:

If you lost your wallet with your credit card and pin number in it, and your credit card was used fraudulently to the tune of £300, would you expect your credit card company to be liable for that?

I don't think you would.

While I don't ever want to be lumped with a bill for charges someone else has rung up, I have to take responsibility for the usage of my phone.

Also, O2 Insure cover some of the call charges made when a phone is stolen. I am assuming this covers from when you report it stolen rather than from when it leaves your possession, but I don't know how much you'd be willing to pay for cover like that.

reehsetin

willoc wrote: »

Exactly...Orange Care isnt worth it cos phone's arent worth that much money anymore...i'm not bothered about the phone but just the calls.

^it depends if yout phone is worth £72, quite a lot of phones are, you cannot say that orange care is always rubbish because quite simpley its not, it may not be a market leader but is a competitive price and has decent terms (replacement usually within 24hrs) and insurance can work well for people who are clumsy with phones.


anyway your phone is your responsibility, if orange have billed you for charges after you reported it lost/stolen thats a different matter but if it took you
say £1 per min max x 300mins = £300, 300mins/60min=5hrs!! to realise your phone was missing you obviously really werent looking after it and therefore should be liable for the phone, orange should not be liable for your carelessness!

Pound

My advice is pay up, then learn how to use the auto-lock feature on your next phone. My SIM has a PIN on it and my phone has a security code which turns on after 3 minutes of none use. There's no way for calls to be made by anyone but me.

virgo17

willoc wrote: »

Do any of you have any advice?? I'm just not prepared to pay a mobile bill that would be more than a year and a halfs worth on calls i didnt make.
Thanks

As you can see most posters here arn't too sympathetic. It is a hard lesson to learn and you have learnt it the hard way. Once my wife lost her Orange contract phone in Dubai. We were firghtened to death that it might have been used for a great number of foreign calls. We were lucky. The SIM was PIN locked and fortunately for us the finder must have removed the battery or switched it off first. After that the chances of guessing the PIN are almost zero.

For your next phone, get one that locks after a set period of minutes. Couple that with a SIM PIN and you are nearly 100% safe. We have learnt this from experience.

With regard to not being prepared to pay for the use when lost. You are on shakey ground. You will either have signed or agreed to a contract that makes you liable for ALL call charges until you report the phone lost. Like it or not, that will be the case. If you don't stump up, Orange will take steps to recover the debt and that may well include damaging your credit rating.

My best advice is to talk to Orange and see if they will come to some agreement. Maybe they will half the bill or offer a similar compromise. Being pleasant to them and not becoming agitated or agressive stands the best chance of some mutual agreement.

Good luck.

V.