Unknown numbers on your telephone bill?

Question

My friend has been getting telephone bills with international calls on them - to Chile, Italy, etc etc. She hasn't made the calls. It is quite clear that someone is tapping into her lines and making the calls on our account. BT don't seem to be too bothered, have made her pay it and she's blocked all international calls. This has been over a period of some months.
Does anyone know how this is possible and what can be done?

Sorry - it should be "her" account. She lives next door to a pub. If that's got anything to do with it.

BT told her to phone the numbers and find out who they are. As she's struggling to pay the bill, she can't afford more international calls!

Sweet Polly - she does have a 12 year old son and if the calls were to sex lines or chat lines, I would accept that idea. However, they're made to unknown numbers in countries where they don't speak to the language.

Answer 1

If BT refuses to resolve the issue,file a complaint with state regulators,the state Attorney General and the Federal Communications Commission.
BT can give the information to you about who the numbers belong to.
If these calls originate from your friends telephone,some one is plugging in at the interface to the house or climbing the telephone pole.
It is also possible that they know your friend and are claiming to be him/her,but the phone co. is supposed to call your home phone for verification if the call does not originate from the home phone.
Also,there should be a phone number listed on the bills that show where the calls originated from.
Your friend can dispute the charges following the BT policy that should be printed somewhere in the phone bill,but it has to be done within 30 days and then BT has 60 days to respond and verify the charges.
Your friend may need to start keeping a record of all phone calls they make,especially long distance,showing the person and number they called. If there is a conflict about dates and calls,your friend will have a record to show that they couldn't make 2 phone calls at the same time from the same phone.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Well, I can tell that if the phone company says that these are direct dialed calls from her phone line, then they are.

There are a couple of possiblilities. Someone is making those calls from her phone line, i.e. a relative or friend. It may sound outlandish to you, but this happens all the time. You wouldn't believe how often this happens. For example, the person has a bunch of 900 sex line calls on their phone. Questions from the rep reveals that they do, indeed, have a son or nephew or whatever that comes to their house from time to time.

The other possiblility is that someone saavy could possibly be hooking up a telephone test phone (called a butt set) directly onto the phone line coming into her home and using the line that way, but that's really a stretch. The line would have to be accessible from the ground, as opposed to the air, for one thing, and they would have to expose the wiring to hook it up, i.e. remove the insulation from the little cable to expose the colored wires. It is possible, though, and living next door to a bar would certainly expose her to a lot of different people with a lot of different skills. Unfortunately, it would be hard to prove. She could request a phone tech come out and take a look at her outside connections to check it, but if they didn't find anything, they will likely bill her for the visit, which could possibly be as much as another $100.

The international call block should take care of the problem, but one other thing she should do is make sure the phone company disables 1010 (ten ten) dialing from her line. By using 1010 dialing, the caller could route the call thru a different long distance provider and get around the call block. She'd receive a bill from ANOTHER long distance company for the call, and start the whole nightmare over again.

Hope it all works out!

Polly

Answer 4

I suggest this reverse phone lookup service: http://reversephone.toptips.org

It's a cheap service that works great!
It could be used for a much deeper search. You can use it to get hold of different varieties of background reports, and in addition cell numbers, addresses and names..
you can get unlimited reports... I ran with this because I required to verify more numbers. You can get the name, other phone number, address history, relatives, and much more about anyone!
The completly free reverse phone lookup generally doesn't provide anything interesting. To get interesting information, money will must be paid. The free searches don't provide considerably more than what may be found through the phone directory.
The reverse phone detective search tool does work, but you should use just the service that I posted above. The last thing you want to do, is pay for a service and find the numbers you want to lookup are not available in their directory.
The service that I reccomend doesn't have any kind of problem , you won't get any bad surprise!

Answer 5

Could be anyone.. Unknown happens normally from out of state long distance. And or a blocked number from a different local carrier.. And also It could be more then just one person and or Business. I get unknown when Telemarketers and bill collectors call.

Answer 6

Dispute the calls, does she have a cordless phone, If she does it it possible that somebody has been going up and down the street where she lives with a phone or two just to find a dial tone. As soon as they found one they made the open line they made the phone call. I would depute this with your telephone company and file a police report with the police. if the costs and high enough I would even get my home owners insurance company involved.

Answer 7

I saw something on TV a while back but can't remember a damn thing about it. I think it was Trevor MacDonalds show so someone out here might remember. I recommend your friend complain everywhere - OFCOM, BBC1's Watchdog, GMTV (they like that sort of thing) and make as much noise as possible about it. Talk to the local paper too. If one person has it you can guarantee that there will be others so your friend can force BT into doing something about it.

Answer 8

Not sure how they can do this, but my advice would be to change her number?

Not an ideal solution but BT should investigate it, if you ask me.

Does she use an alternative supplier? That could be one reason - if she is just using the BT line but using someone like Telecom Plus, then it might be possible?

Just a thought. Wish her luck and sorry not much help.

Answer 9

Does she use a cordless phone? If so it is possible someone has managed to 'pair' a rouge cordless phone with her system.

If not then need to escallate - it is possible someone has tapped into the wires - BT should be able to investigate this.

Good luck.

Answer 10

BT stands for Bastard Thieves! Go to citizen advice, complain to Of-tel. I changed my supplier, but still have to pay rent to BT. They still charged me for for the free evening and weekend calls, so I paid twice. When I complained, I was told that I didnt tell them to change the rate. Liars.

Has she got the bill still? It will have the times of the calls, and she may be able to prove she was elsewhere at the time.

Now I'm on whinge mode, I was on pay-you-go internet with BT, and their connection is shite. I was having to press the dial up button several times, I was charged a fortune, as they charge for dial up every time you press the button.