So I got "slammed" and my broadband stolen

[PaulCa]

Monday morning my internet was down. ADSL signal, but no ISP PPP connection. Went to work assuming it was a temporary blip. Came home and now the ADSL signal is gone too. No dial tone on the phone either. Nothing.

Phoned up my ISP and it turns out that an "LLU Cease" request was received from another provider. They did email me, once, but it got lost in the usual marketing noise. I thought they "Your phone is moving..." truncated title sounded just like click bate marketing BS and I ignored it.

Now they tell me it could take up to 10 days to get it back on as it was a full "cease" of all services with BT on the line.

Thing is, I have no contact with any ISPs so this was either a mistake or something suspicious is going on.

First thing is first, waiting to here back on how long it will take to get the broadband back on. If it's going to take longer than 2 days I'm going to see if I can find a PAYG sim card for them and see if I can talk them into providing unlimited data on it.

Then I have start phoning and chasing the other ISP to see what the actual **** they are playing at.

If it turns out to have been requested by a person who lives in my area, then I have to go to the police too.

 

[PaulCa]

I tethered through my mobile last night. It used 4Gb of my 12Gb allowance. So that isn't going to last.

I might ask my provider, that if I can find a PAYG sim for them somewhere that they give me unlimited data till they sort this out.

 

[PaulCa]

Orange were the requester. They have no record of this on their accounts.

My ISP have scheduled a reconnect, but it won't be until the 25th September.

So I still have the risk of malicious intent. I need to know who moved it away so I can feel safer this is not a direct attack on me and identity theft. On that note, should I go to the police?

 

[PaulCa]

So I went to my provider and got a copy of the LLU request, including the order number. I phoned Orange back and tried to check the status of that order with them... Right up until they said the order was not in my name, then I came clean and told them I didn't raise it and was trying to track it.

As requested/demanded they are going to:
1. Top up my mobile data for the next while with 10Gb add ons until it's resolved.
2. Contact the person who did the order and check if it was a mistake or take appropriate action if it's suspicious.

They also recommend I push my current provider harder to force them into carrying out an emergency restoration of service on the line with BT which should take 24-48 hours only.

Hopefully there is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

[PaulCa]

Shadow and others, I will happily cheer and snigger when you get screwed over next time

 

[PaulCa]

Are people being serious? Compensation? The Police? Malicious intent?

Clearly it's a simple mistake in that someone gave a wrong address or got the address and phone number mixed up. Your ISP is duty bound to inform you but NOT block the transfer by OFCOM regulations. They haven't technically done anything wrong

What's your address to see if you like it.

Apparently that's all it takes. Phone up a provider, give someones address, request broadband.

Considering how important Internet is these days this is ludicrous.

I have worked in Energy Retail and due to this kind of rubbish there are much tighter regulations there now.

I will also add that in an energy switch there is no loss of service. Being forced, through no action of your own to have to deal with no internet for 14+ days anytime someone wants to play funny buggers is beyond annoying.

 

[PaulCa]

Whats the attack vector here? Why would someone malicously LLU cease your service?

I was more worried that someone had impersonated me to do it. Then transferred my phone number to another premises.

I understand that when we had MAC codes the problem was when you moved house, if the house you moved to had active broadband, you had to wait until that person requested broadband elsewhere and freed your line. That or contact them (or have your ISP reach out via the other parties ISP) for the MAC code. Forcing the take over took weeks otherwise.

There there was the issue of the outbound provider trying to delay and stall tactic leavers by not issuing the MAC codes in a prompt manor.

However the current "implied consent" unless told otherwise is seriously flawed and OfCom agree from what I have read. They encourage everyone who has been slammed to report it to them so they can build a case for the government.

Apparently (according to the guardian) this happens to something around 600,000 people in the UK every year. Although usually it's dodgy sales tactics by tricking people into saying the are "interested in switching" over the phone, the switch them without taking many details and later bill them by post. Dodgy tactics, miss-selling etc. It happens in the Energy retail sector too, as I mentioned, just take peoples names and addresses at a super market and switch them without their consent. In that sector there is no loss of service, just your billing provider changes, but they have put strict controls and measure onto the retails to try and prevent this happening. They also heavily fine them.

 

[PaulCa]

Ofcom rules say that the losing provider cannot use it as an opportunity to rescue the customer. Just inform them if any charges are due, and provide information for how to cancel the request.

My understanding is this was government rules to encourage switching and thus competition, OfCom are against it, though you are correct, they enforce the rules on the ISPs.

There has to be a better way.

Emailing and lettering no longer works, because frankly I receive about 100 bits of junk through the door for every actual letter and I recieve about 1000 emails for every actual email I need to read.

Phoning me might work better.

Emailing repeatedly, like 10 days, 6 days, 3 days, TOMORROW!

 

[PaulCa]

I really don't see why it's your ISPs problem that you (accidentally) ignored their notification email.

I really don't expect someone to steal my phoneline do I?

I'm sick of nonsense marketing spam so I read hardly any email anymore

 

[PaulCa]

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.

 

[PaulCa]

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?

 

[PaulCa]

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.

 

[PaulCa]

Can’t believe people still use ADSL

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.

 

[PaulCa]

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.

 

[PaulCa]

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.)

 

[PaulCa]

You work in email surveillance for a bank, but ignore all your own emails and think they are spam?

Why did they hire you... Not very analytical is it lol

The fact you think any of what you said is relevant shows how little you know.

 

[PaulCa]

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.

 

[PaulCa]

Further update.

Tried BT. Well, they just tried to sell me broadband, shame on them. But they could not, themselves get around the OpenReach 10 day cooling off delay either.

Went back to the provider who slammed me, who I also have my mobile with and ... after a few transfers and remaining as nice as possible with them they added 50Gb of data to my mobile to keep me online until I'm back on line.