09083149092

We are Telewest business customers. I've just opened the latest bill to find an item for £25.6577 for a call lasting 20.06 minutes to 09083149092. We are in Enfield. Our total bill for calls is less than £30 including this item, and my partner and I were both at meetings in Central London at the time.

I don't think we will be falling for any line testing excuse when I speak to them on Monday morning. There are no children here.

Forgot to mention that our call was logged at 12.18 pm on Thursday 18th September.

Hi everyone,

I called Telewest this morning, and spoke to four different people including faults, who confirmed that there was no technical problem.

Telewest are looking into matters, but they are clearly starting from scratch, and there is no obviously no procedure for dealing with this kind of thing - which is presumably what the person/people doing this is/are banking on.

There is obviously something here that is not right, and could still be happening to people. As a precaution, I have advised the BBC Radio 4 You and Yours programme, and one or two local media contacts. It would be very helpful if you would contact the programme yourself, saying who you are on this thread, to demonstrate we are on the level. There is a simple form to fill in here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyours/youandyours_contact.shtml

Thanks.

UPDATE 14:42 27/10/08:

Telewest customer services have referred the matter to billing to get our charge cancelled, and they have also escalated the matter to management with a view to investigating a possible fraud.

OK I finally got a result. I spoke to customer services at length trying to pin down exactly what calls had been made on the day that this permium rate charge was made. I explained that I was simply trying to gather every piece of evidence so that I could make a formal complaint (in writing) to ofcom, and to Virgin Media with an expectation that I would eventually have to take a deadlocked situation with Virgin Media to CISAS. In the end they agreed to do a "Call Log investigation". Today I got a call from "Customer Care", where they told me that they had investigated and found that someone had been hacking into the "MUX", I believe that that is the green box, opposite where I live, where all the VM cables in our area are joined up. VM said they would reimburse me the £26.90. They also said that they had been aware of this scam for about 2 weeks. Apparently the way customer services handled this was not what should have happened. Anyone still wishing to dispute their charge should ask for a "Call Log investigation". Whilst I am glad the eventual outcome I think the handling of this has been poor. What I object to was the immediate assumption that I was simply someone who was out to cheat VM. They offerred me a £10 rebate, which I refused because I knew I was right. I think others, less determined, might well have given into the pressure to just pay up. VM can take that kind of line, but in the end, long term, it will damage customer relations, and their long term profitability. Best of luck to others of you hit by this scam.

Thanks Ta Gordon. I haven't heard back from Telewest yet, but they did say they were 'referring up' and it would take a while. Your posting is very useful, and I will bear it in mind when they eventually get back to me.

I can understand why you would take their apparent distrust of your word personally, but when dealing with large telcos it helps to realise that people are operating on a 'need to know' basis, and that the business is full of people looking for a quiet life who quickly learn that it is unwise to confuse their immediate supervisor with the facts.

Incidentally, a Mux is a data processing device. It's short for multiplexor. Because voice calls take up very little bandwidth, you digitise them, mix them into a datastream down a single cable, and then untangle them at the other end using another device, sometimes called a demux. There may be one in the green box opposite you, but it might be somewhere else.

It's a bit like someone hacking into the wireless router in someone's house, and then downloading material on their broadband subscription. It could be an isolated individual wanting to make premium calls at no cost, or someone making it look as if a lot of people are calling a premium number so the telco pays up, treating the 'isolated' protests of their customers in much the same way as most people here were at first treated.

I wonder how many family rows similar incidents have caused...

I've also got this on my bill (just checked after having an abnormally large DD for phone this month), they're investigating it for me.  I too live in Winchmore Hill.

Each of you experencing this issuse SHOULD contact watchdog (giving them the url to this site). Watchdog ran a story on this last year (premium calls that were never made all from the same area, all from virgin media phone lines). At first VM  refused to agnlodge any problem, as soon as watchdog got onto it VM refunded everyone affected and called the police.

I suspect the people committing the fraud simply moved to a new area (Winchmore Hill)