mobile phone scam that leaves you with a £300 bill for calls you never made

Tuvoc · 21 May 2016 at 13:20

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...ne-scam-leaves-300-bill-calls-never-made.html

Saw this a month or so ago. Pretty terrifying especially as the mobile phone providers are insisting that the calls were made, and not refunding without a fight. My 12 month SIM-only plan with EE is coming to an end, and this sort of thing is likely to drive me back to giffgaff - nice hybrid of PAYG and packaged allowances (goodybags), and no possibilty of this happening beyond using up any credit you have on your account. I wonder if giffgaff's data speed has improved...

mark43 · 21 May 2016 at 13:48

Tuvoc said:
I wonder if giffgaff's data speed has improved...

Sorry but huge amounts of NO! Its got worse if anything. Although it is nice to know the most I could loose with scams like this is my very small amount of credit.

insane200 · 21 May 2016 at 13:53

That's pretty shocking, thankfully not received one yet, just a 020 number which googling turns out to be a car accident claim line scam.

If this does become common then the operators will have no choice but to refund.

Tuvoc · 21 May 2016 at 14:01

mark43 said:
Sorry but huge amounts of NO! Its got worse if anything. .

Crikey - why can't they get on top of the problem ?

Antony101 · 21 May 2016 at 14:54

Considering Three allows you to block all numbers that would cost you money I'm not that bothered about this tbh.

Buffman · 21 May 2016 at 14:56

Can't you just put a block on extra payments on a standard sim only plan?

I know my extra limit on my bt phone I set as 20quid

Antony101 · 21 May 2016 at 14:59

The Craig said:
Can't you just put a block on extra payments on a standard sim only plan?

I know my extra limit on my bt phone I set as 20quid

I have a Three sim and I have it set so I can't go over my data limit (it's 1000GB anyway), text limit or call numbers that are outside of my allowance.

Tuvoc · 21 May 2016 at 20:00

The Craig said:
Can't you just put a block on extra payments on a standard sim only plan?

I know my extra limit on my bt phone I set as 20quid

Some networks can do that and others not. I was chatting online to TalkMobile today, and they say they cannot bar premium rate numbers. Likewise, Vodafone cannot put a limit on your account either. On data for example, they send you texts as you get close to the limit, but they have no mechanism for limiting your bill. I'm on EE of course, I need to check with them.

Antony101 · 21 May 2016 at 20:46

Tuvoc said:
Some networks can do that and others not. I was chatting online to TalkMobile today, and they say they cannot bar premium rate numbers. Likewise, Vodafone cannot put a limit on your account either. On data for example, they send you texts as you get close to the limit, but they have no mechanism for limiting your bill. I'm on EE of course, I need to check with them.

Oh they do, they just make too much money off of people accidentally going over their limits.

Three will let me disable basically anything I like so I don't go over my limits. I find it hard to believe companies like EE and Vodaphone can't do the same.

Tuvoc · 22 May 2016 at 07:10

On Vodafone you can enable a "Premium rate information call and text bar" in the account section, and we've done that on my wife's phone. That should stop this sort of scam. I'll contact EE today about my phone.

I did speak to Vodafone about data and they said there is no way you they can cap data or costs if you go over the limit (but that is a separate topic..)

Tuvoc · 22 May 2016 at 08:07

mark43 said:
Sorry but huge amounts of NO! Its got worse if anything. Although it is nice to know the most I could loose with scams like this is my very small amount of credit.

Just tried a speedtest on giffgaff - 8am Sunday, off-peak. I have one of their SIMS for cheap international calls. Speedtest result: down 1.5Mb and up 0.5Mb. OK this was on my 3G Moto-G, but that is indeed no better, or possibly worse than when I was with them 12 months ago ! I should try in my 4G phone, but what used to happen with that was the same 1Mb down and 16 Mb up. The down speed being the important one, which was useless.

Antony101 · 22 May 2016 at 08:58

For comparison, my speed test with Three shows 55 down and 15 up.

this_is_gav · 22 May 2016 at 10:32

On Three 3G (no 4G in the sticks) 17Mbps down and 3Mbps up. I didn't last more than a few months with GiffGaff due to the terrible data speeds, and that was at least 3 years back - it sounds worse now.

G-MAN2004 · 22 May 2016 at 13:09

How on earth does the call go through if you don't answer it?