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

Daisymac_2

A couple of years ago now my husbands phone was stolen from a hotel room, we only realised the next morning when we packed to go home, over £100 of calls had been made (we know it could have been a lot worse), we reported the phone stolen as soon as we realised and T-Mobile were really good, in fact they didnt make us pay any of the bill and sent us a new phone (although upgrade was due), didnt have insurance with them either.

alan99_2

Pound wrote: »

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.

Question
Can calls to 999 be made without remembering( under stress) the pin number?

QUOTE
"orange is also a victim it will leave them out of pocket if they excuse the op from the bill whether its by 30p or £300 (ok they are a big multi national company blah blah blah but have orange actually done anything wrong here? nope...so why should they be out of pocket if anything the op should pursue the thief for their money back not orange)"UNQUOTE

Orange should bear some responsibility here.
Was £300 of calls in 48 hours normal call behaviour or suspicous?
Shouldnt they have contacted the subscriber ,using a registered code number, and discussed things with them, a bit like ccard cos monitoring non normal card usage.

Alan

virgo17

alan99 wrote: »

Question
Orange should bear some responsibility here.
Was £300 of calls in 48 hours normal call behaviour or suspicous?
Shouldnt they have contacted the subscriber ,using a registered code number, and discussed things with them, a bit like ccard cos monitoring non normal card usage.

I'm not sure they should. There are many occasions when a user can start making many more calls than 'normal'. New job, family bereavement or following a car accident/hospitalisation are just a few that spring to mind.

V.

nellytheelephant

alan99 wrote: »

Question
Can calls to 999 be made without remembering( under stress) the pin number?

Yep, because even with a pin lock if you dial 999 it will overide it. You can dial 999 even before putting the pin in when you turn the phone on as well.

agsnu

virgo17 wrote: »

I'm not sure they should. There are many occasions when a user can start making many more calls than 'normal'. New job, family bereavement or following a car accident/hospitalisation are just a few that spring to mind.

There are many occasions when a user starts making "unusual" transactions on their credit card. The card company often attempts to contact them to check that everything's OK. Your argument is a non sequitur.

M4RKM

i'm wondering why people are saying things like it is unfortunate that your phone was stolen, when clearly the OP said they lost it, so therefore it is carelessness...

virgo17

agsnu wrote: »

There are many occasions when a user starts making "unusual" transactions on their credit card. The card company often attempts to contact them to check that everything's OK. Your argument is a non sequitur.

Au contraire.

As has been pointed out several times on this forum, a mobile phone contract bears no resemblence to a credit card, to which different rules apply.

The bottom line is that if a customers phone is used by a third party, the contract holder is liable for all call charges until such time as the phone is reported lost or stolen to the network. There is no onus on the network to check the calling patern of the users account. Whether or not this should be a moral obligation is neither here nor there, that is the contract agreed to by the OP.

Also, it is not "my argument" as you put it. It is a statement of fact. FWIW, I do sympathise with the OP as I have been in a similar situation myself.

Your anology is flawed as you are not comparing like with like.

V.

Cavey

virgo17 wrote: »

The bottom line is that if a customers phone is used by a third party, the contract holder is liable for all call charges until such time as the phone is reported lost or stolen to the network. There is no onus on the network to check the calling patern of the users account. Whether or not this should be a moral obligation is neither here nor there, that is the contract agreed to by the OP.

I agree phones are not credit cards (and have stated as such somewhere), but they are tied to your credit rating and in some ways your bank account. They also allow for third parties to misuse your phone should they manage to gain possession of it and rack up large charges.

I therefore ask...

Should systems (or maybe rules) similar to (or comparable to) those applicable to cards be applied to phones?

Should it be a legal requirement that phone companies allow you to put a monthly limit on your account? For example, I may choose that if my next bill reaches £50 they disable my phone until I ring customer services.

Should it be a legal requirement that phone companies allow you to bar different features? For example barring 09**, 08** international phone numbers or premium reverse-charged text messages.

virgo17

Cavey wrote: »

I therefore ask...

Should systems (or maybe rules) similar to (or comparable to) those applicable to cards be applied to phones?

Now this is a different issue to the one where agsnu referred to my comments as 'a non sequitur'.

It might well be a good idea, provided the service provider was able to put in place the software to enable this facility. I have a couple of Virgin PAYG SIM cards that I have elected to pay by direct debit. For each number I was asked to define a maximum spend on the account after which the phones would be cut off (or at least outgoing calls barred) until the debit was cleared. I have never tested this limit but fully appreciate that if my phone is lost or stolen whilst abroad, which is the reason I obtained the Virgin cards, it might be several days before Virgin become aware of any excessive roaming charges run up and thus the limit easily breached.

To be honest, if a person is worried about having large bills run up by a third party there are IMHO two courses of action. Take out insurance, but ensure it covers such eventualities or buy a PAYG phone and keep a small amount of credit on the card.

As nice as it would be, I don't see the networks putting in place the measures that you are advocating any time soon, unfortunately.

V.

elliediz

have you reported it to the police??? they may be able to trace who stole it through the number they called.