help, i've been scammed!!

[dallas]

Hi all.I have just been scammed and my phone operator refuses to accept that anything wrong has happened so i thought i would share my experience with yourselves to see if anyone else has had a similar problem and/or has any ideas what I do about it from here.

I went to text my girlfriend this morning on my nokia 7210 but had no credit (Pay as you go) which was wierd because I had at least five pounds credit on it yesterday.There is nothing unusual on the call register and i logged onto the virgin mobile website to see if I could get a clue of where the credit had gone.What i found was that at just after half one this morning my phone started ringing a premium rate number 0901 236 0236 at 50p a time and continued to do this at approxiamtely 20 to 30 second intervals until all my credit had been used up.I was asleep at the time and have no idea what this number is.I cant phone it from mobile (no credit!) and dont want to do it from work because if it is some dodgy sex-line my employers wont be too happy seeing it coming up on their bill.I phoned virgin about this who looked into it and said that because the calls were not made at regular intervals (there is a gap of between about twenty and fourty seconds between calls) then it must have been me who made the calls and there is nothing they can do about it.The said if not happy I could write in and complain but there would still be nothing they could do about it.There is no point of me topping up the credit on my phone for fear that it could happen again,so short of getting a new simcard and/or phone what can I do? Any ideas/comments or suggestions would be gratefully received and many thanks to anyone who makes them.

Dallas,London.

[nick]

Maybe your sim had been cloned. I have never heard of this happening before so it's only a guess.

Write to/email VIrgin and complain though. At least it will confirm what you have already told them over the phone, and you may find a written complaint gets dealt with.

And if I were you I would throw that simcard away and get another one. PM me your address and I have a Virgin simcard here that you can have.

[hardic]

Hi all.I have just been scammed and my phone operator refuses to accept that anything wrong has happened so i thought i would share my experience with yourselves to see if anyone else has had a similar problem and/or has any ideas what I do about it from here.

I went to text my girlfriend this morning on my nokia 7210 but had no credit (Pay as you go) which was wierd because I had at least five pounds credit on it yesterday.There is nothing unusual on the call register and i logged onto the virgin mobile website to see if I could get a clue of where the credit had gone.What i found was that at just after half one this morning my phone started ringing a premium rate number 0901 236 0236 at 50p a time and continued to do this at approxiamtely 20 to 30 second intervals until all my credit had been used up.I was asleep at the time and have no idea what this number is.I cant phone it from mobile (no credit!) and dont want to do it from work because if it is some dodgy sex-line my employers wont be too happy seeing it coming up on their bill.I phoned virgin about this who looked into it and said that because the calls were not made at regular intervals (there is a gap of between about twenty and fourty seconds between calls) then it must have been me who made the calls and there is nothing they can do about it.The said if not happy I could write in and complain but there would still be nothing they could do about it.There is no point of me topping up the credit on my phone for fear that it could happen again,so short of getting a new simcard and/or phone what can I do? Any ideas/comments or suggestions would be gratefully received and many thanks to anyone who makes them.

Dallas,London.








I had the same problem on my vodafone sonyericsson t68i.What i did was
put in the number to check the credit and *#1345# and locked the keypad.
Vodafone staff said that they could not do anything.I was checking my phone every 10 s and the lights would come up

shit.
that really freaks me out.

imagine if this happens to those who have contracts they would have a huge bill

[analogboy]

is it possible that u clicked on a wap alert? ive done that and then every day till my credit ran out i got charged £2.50... had to get o2 to block the number for me

[hardic]

by da way my t68i wasnt wap enabled yet.

[dallas]

Hi Nick and sorry its taken ages to reply.Computer at work died (i was born lucky...) and i've only just got everything up and running right on the new one.

Thanks for the offer but Virgin were doing some text bundle promotion thing where you could get free simcards off of them and I managed to get four so am okay for now and for the next few times something goes wrong!

Mind you,if something else does go wrong I think I'll go back to using two cans and a bit of string.At least the only thing i have to worry about then is rust!

[dallas]

Thanks to hardic and analogboy for your comments as well.

I'm sure i didnt enable wap alert and Hardic you are dead right.Its just bloody lucky neithe of us were on contracts 'cos the amount of legal goings on we'd be stuck in the middle of to try and get something done just dont bear thinking about.

I've still got to get the premium rate numbers barred on my new sim just in case.The scary thing is that you know no matter how much technology or safety features they put into phones,computers or anything like that,sooner or later someone will work out a way to rip people of for it....

if you would like to know more about this subject please just send me £49.95 for my latest pamphlet 'the big book of how not to get ripped off' and i'm sure it will help.

p.s. if you get ten friends to buy one as well,you get a discount!

I wish you all hassle free phoning.

Dallas

[phil8715]

Hi There

I dont wish 2 appear cynical,but why dont u just switch ur phone off at night?

Cheers

Phil

[dallas]

It would be nice to be able to but my job dicates I need to be contactable 24/7.

[phil8715]

hi

Why doesnt ur company provide you wiv a company mobile phone,instead of u having 2 use a virgin payg phone,it would seem more sense to me. Unless you are a sub-contracted and have to use ur own phone,or ur self empolyed.

cheers


Phil

[angeljs]

I had a problem with my Orange sim card. Some company kept sending me ringtones at £1.50 per time, but I didn't realise what was happening until I checked my balance...over £15 had gone! I contacted Orange who were very unhelpful and said that someone (i.e. Me!) must have signed up to receive them...(I have never, ever used my mobile to receive anything as it's just used for family and friends basic contact), and the company they were coming from was based in Germany so I didn't have any comeback. Orange got me the name of the company and told me how to stop them, but they still kept coming, so I had to change my sim card in the end.

[phil8715]

Hi It isnt Jamster,or partymob is it?

Because if you dont read the small print,u have £3.00 of credit deduced every week,unless u text stop.Thats if it is 1 of the 2 i have stated.


cheers

Phil

[angeljs]

Yes, I think it was Jamster...I did everything I was told to stop them, but they just kept on coming :confused:

[phil8715]

I think you need 2 text stop about 3 times for it to completly stop.I've problems with other companies to stop text alerts in the past. I would actually email them and tell them to put a stop to the msgs,or you'll contact trading standards about it,I think Jamster it was featured on BBC Watchdog in the past.

Good luck

Phil

[angeljs]

Yes, I tried all that, and even telephoned, but it still continued. I've just changed my provider now. :sleepy: Thanks for your advice. ;)

[jooldexor]

man... scams like these make me think twice about surfing so carelessly... gotta run spybot and get the latest definitions in norton just to make sure... ^_^