So I got "slammed" and my broadband stolen

Soldato
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I accidentally made this happen to my neighbour apparently.

When we bought our house before we moved in I made the inquiry to BT take on the services in the house. BT I think got my soon-to-be house and next door mixed up. Same postcode and very similar house names. Only after I moved in did my new neighbour tell me that he got an email from BT saying 'sorry to hear you're leaving' and swiftly had to cancel the cessation order. Of course BT didn't tell me so I moved in to find no phone or internet and it was another two weeks before anything was sorted. **** happens. It's nearly always incompetence or mistake ahead of conspiracy. Not just true for this but in life in general often.
 
Associate
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I love the way you have turned a simple mistake into this massive conspiracy..... you cant go through life like this surely?

So. Given the information I had at hand.

1. My internet stopped working.
2. When I phoned the ISP they said someone had attempted to transfer the line out.

Now, I am still of the opinion, regardless of what OfCom regs are that this SHOULD be impossible without my consent. I was also under the impression that to do so required a MAC code and at very least the address AND phone number.

Thus at the time I assumed someone clearly knew my number, my address and had someone authenticated to my (or their) ISP as me in order to remove my phoneline. At the time I did not know if they had transfered my phone number to a different location and potentially were continuing to use it to impersonate me.

If you want to live in a lovely world were everyone is trust-able... can you give me your online bank password so I can tell you if it's secure or not? aka. you are a mug and you WILL get conned, scammed and ripped off eventually.

I find it frankly absolutely ludicrous that a random stranger can go to a random third party company and without ANY checks and balances make a request witch has one of my essential utilities switched off. Emails giving me a chance to cancel this ARE NOT ENOUGH! I intend to complain to OfCom about this. I do not care the reasons why they allow this, but I do not want it to happen to my broadband again and will do whatever I can to ensure it can't.

Consider if someone was able to phone up your electricity provider and arrange to have your house disconnected from the grid. With no checks or balances and no authenticcation, all you get is an email which you miss. Suddenly you are plunged into darkness and the electric company tells you it will be 2 weeks to reconnect you. Sound ridiculous? Yes, it should. Because it is.
 
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Associate
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It's not an essential utility. It's a convenience. If it's essential, ie. you will lose money thru not having a internet connection, then get a business line with appropriate levels of support. If you're on a domestic service then all you can reasonably be miffed about is a few days of losing Netflix and DebbieDoesStrangeThingsWithAvocados on YouTube.

Crack out your phone with 4G and get on with your life.

Whoever ordered your line moved needed nothing much more than postcode, house number or existing telephone line.
 

Raz

Raz

Soldato
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Consider if someone was able to phone up your electricity provider and arrange to have your house disconnected from the grid. With no checks or balances and no authenticcation, all you get is an email which you miss. Suddenly you are plunged into darkness and the electric company tells you it will be 2 weeks to reconnect you. Sound ridiculous? Yes, it should. Because it is.

Exactly what happened to me, and think it was E.ON's incompetence more than anything else.

Moved into a new house and set up dual fuel account with them. Took three months for them to sort out gas meter (wasn't in the register, wanted to swap over but kept missing booked appointments etc). The week it was finally sorted received a letter saying they were sorry to see me go....

Called them straight away and was told that they were doing what I had asked. Eventually after many calls and emails they suggested someone had given another provider my gas meter number by mistake, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. Took ages to sort out...
 
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It's not an essential utility. It's a convenience. If it's essential, ie. you will lose money thru not having a internet connection, then get a business line with appropriate levels of support. If you're on a domestic service then all you can reasonably be miffed about is a few days of losing Netflix and DebbieDoesStrangeThingsWithAvocados on YouTube.

Crack out your phone with 4G and get on with your life.

Whoever ordered your line moved needed nothing much more than postcode, house number or existing telephone line.

According to the government Internet connections are an essential utility. It has been for a while and they are making ends to support this notion better every year.

A of of people do need to work from home, but do not want nor need a business connection. However I have the option to work from home or to go to the office. So not having the Internet just inconveniences me. Others with child care (or other) responibilities might not be so lucky.

I'm fairly sure there are just the same protections on a business broadband account which can be hijacked/slammed exactly the same way.

I AM using 4G on my phone, which is actually somewhat faster than my ADSL. However.... My TV is via the web, my movies are via the web, my entertainment if via the web (youtube), my games are online (steam) with limited "offline" access.

How long do you think my 12Gb of data will last? How much do you think it costs for 10Gb of data on 4G?
 
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Called them straight away and was told that they were doing what I had asked. Eventually after many calls and emails they suggested someone had given another provider my gas meter number by mistake, but there was nothing they could do to stop it. Took ages to sort out...

How can this be acceptible?

It is so open to exploit. If my neighbor ****** me off I can just phone up any Internet provider I choose and get it switched off for him. Ludicrous.
 
Caporegime
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Indeed it is.

The process was already underway when I received the letter so it would make sense to have some form of check with the account holder as soon as a request is put through.

They do check. By emailing or sending you a text message. As I said above large ISP's will receive dozens if not hundreds of cease requests on a daily basis, 90%+ of which are genuine transfers to other providers. Should they be calling every one? OFCOM rules state they're not allowed to constantly call or harass leaving customers as well. This is clearly an accident by someone who gave the wrong details on a new order with another provider. If anything the new company should have picked this up as a potential issue rather than the losing provider. I know Virgin and ourselves conduct checks to make sure the postcode, address and house number all match before transferring a service but it does happen, especially on new builds.
 
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Can’t believe people still use ADSL :p

I considered fibre, it is available, but I live alone. I get 14Mbit which translates to a real world, 1-1.3Mbyte per second. So the only things I have found myself waiting on are multi-gigabyte game downloads. The local fibre speeds are 40Mbit so it might cut the time I wait on a new release from 6 hours down to 2 or three. I just figured it wasn't worth the hassle or cost. Although that said, it IS becoming cheaper. I believe the limited fibre is the same price, £20 pm, the unlimited fibre is £40pm last I looked.
 
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They do check. By emailing or sending you a text message. As I said above large ISP's will receive dozens if not hundreds of cease requests on a daily basis, 90%+ of which are genuine transfers to other providers. Should they be calling every one? OFCOM rules state they're not allowed to constantly call or harass leaving customers as well. This is clearly an accident by someone who gave the wrong details on a new order with another provider. If anything the new company should have picked this up as a potential issue rather than the losing provider. I know Virgin and ourselves conduct checks to make sure the postcode, address and house number all match before transferring a service but it does happen, especially on new builds.

We understand this is what currently happens, but I am not alone in believing it is in error. It is placing competition in the market above sense.

I don't have a solution and I have been on the recieving end of the old way of MAC codes and moving into a house when the previous party had not released the broadband yet. It took over a month to get the broadband on. However in those days your phone and broadband where separate. So once you got through BT and managed to get the BT line changed over the broadband followed as you had proof the line was in your name as they could check with BT.

I don't believe the current solution is viable. There needs to be some form of check. Even if it is to check if the current broadboard is active. If it is, then further consideration should be carried out.

Remember there are different types of switch. Changing provider is only one of them. Moving house is another. It is this one I was worried about. This involves lifting the package including the landline number and moving it to a different address, keeping the number and service otherwise intact. In this case you know the person SHOULD live at the old address at this moment so they SHOULD be able to verify they do at the point they make the order.

This is the original ofcom proposal in 2013.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/consumer-switching-review

If you read it you might note that it focuses entirely on making switching easier and provide very little protection against malicious or accidental switching.

BTW, email is not a reliable form of communication, I believe it is estimated that as much as 25% of non-spam emails are dropped before the recipient in question gets it. Thus it should not be used to communicate important information to consumers.
 
Caporegime
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We understand this is what currently happens, but I am not alone in believing it is in error. It is placing competition in the market above sense.

I don't have a solution and I have been on the recieving end of the old way of MAC codes and moving into a house when the previous party had not released the broadband yet. It took over a month to get the broadband on. However in those days your phone and broadband where separate. So once you got through BT and managed to get the BT line changed over the broadband followed as you had proof the line was in your name as they could check with BT.

I don't believe the current solution is viable. There needs to be some form of check. Even if it is to check if the current broadboard is active. If it is, then further consideration should be carried out.

Remember there are different types of switch. Changing provider is only one of them. Moving house is another. It is this one I was worried about. This involves lifting the package including the landline number and moving it to a different address, keeping the number and service otherwise intact. In this case you know the person SHOULD live at the old address at this moment so they SHOULD be able to verify they do at the point they make the order.

This is the original ofcom proposal in 2013.
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/consultations-and-statements/category-2/consumer-switching-review

If you read it you might note that it focuses entirely on making switching easier and provide very little protection against malicious or accidental switching.

BTW, email is not a reliable form of communication, I believe it is estimated that as much as 25% of non-spam emails are dropped before the recipient in question gets it. Thus it should not be used to communicate important information to consumers.

Many will also send a letter. People get upset about having to wait two weeks for services to switch or go active. The two weeks is what allows losing providers to take over lines correctly.
 
Caporegime
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I don't follow you at all - say somebody maliciously transfers your line/broadband to another provider, you ignore/miss the notification, and it goes through. They're then paying for your service and getting nothing out of it.

Why would they do it?

Be interested to see where that 25% failure rate on legitimate emails comes from as well, it sounds very wrong (assuming each end is configured correctly, which if we are saying is an ISPs customer messaging platform to a service like Gmail would likely be the case).
 
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I don't follow you at all - say somebody maliciously transfers your line/broadband to another provider, you ignore/miss the notification, and it goes through. They're then paying for your service and getting nothing out of it.

Why would they do it?

Be interested to see where that 25% failure rate on legitimate emails comes from as well, it sounds very wrong (assuming each end is configured correctly, which if we are saying is an ISPs customer messaging platform to a service like Gmail would likely be the case).

They could do it just to * you off. Having your phone number can add authentication to any identity fraud attempt. On it's own not enough, but added with other bits lifted out of your bin or through hacking an email account it could add just enough to get access to credit cards etc.

Some providers do not bill you up front, so they would have nothing to pay for the first month.

Email is not guaranteed delivery. It's "best effort". If you check your mail headers you might find that your email has passed through more than two email systems, some times quite a lot. Email addresses, servers etc. get blacklisted, mail queues get full, spam filters get set wrong.

In fact during this fiasco my ISP sent me two emails, neither came through. I checked all folders and my junk folder and verified the address with them twice and none showed up. It has unfortunately become an acceptible and legally binding form of communications, even when it's so easy to spoof a sender and a date in an email. (I currently work in email surveillance for a bank.)
 
Soldato
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You work in email surveillance for a bank, but ignore all your own emails and think they are spam?

Why did they hire you... :p Not very analytical is it lol
 
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Updates:
Tuesday.
The provider that ceased the line denied all knowledge of it.
I contacted my own ISP who gave me the BT OpenReach order number.
I phoned the slamming provider and pretended this was my order. Finally they found it but wouldn't talk to me about it as it wasn't in my name. They wouldn't tell me who it was of course. They admitted it was a case of slamming and offered to top up my data on my EE mobile 10Gb at a time when I started to run out.

Thursday.
I phoned my own ISP to ask them to elevate the take back order to "Emergency Restoration", but they refused because the OfCom regulations require they give the (now losing) provider 10 days to reject the order. They suggested if I can get the other provider to release/cease the hold on the line leaving it unassigned, they could cancel my current order and raise a new one getting me online in 24-48 hours.

Friday.
Phoned the other ISP. They denied all knowledge of this, told me they couldn't find that open reach order. Told me they had no record of my phone number or me at that address. I explained that was because my phonenumber was disconnected and the line at my house was now in someone elses name. They refused to help me. I have sent them off to review their call logs and recordings from Tuesday.

Tonight.
I will phone them from my new unwanted landline and tell them, "THIS NUMBER". Of course they won't talk to me about that number as it's not in my name.
I will also read the letter they sent to "The Occupier" discovered in my junk snail mail box.

All I want is for them to give me a bit of help towards the data costs. I want a fair price on 40Gb of data, which the market rate for is £80. Alternatively, release my line immediately and give me formal notice gauranteeing this has happened, so I can retract my take over order and issue a "new connection " order with my ISP.
 
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