Ballistic Duck Bill

December 29th, 2003 - 09:46 | 3 comments

I opened Eudora this morning to find a bill from O2. It was a bit over my “regular” £25 monthly payments, which amused me, since I haven’t made any calls on it. After a minute or so of telling people this new titbit of information, I realised that I had Kate’s York IMAP account open by mistake, so it wasn’t my bill at all. Phew I then spotted that a bill had in fact arrived in my ‘Mobile’ folder, so had a look.

£101.06.

That’s pretty impressive for a phone I’ve never used, don’t you think? So have they given me a duplicate number, or did my phone disappear en route back to them? Whichever, I’ve cancelled the direct debit from my account. They’ve already had £200 of my money, that’s enough for one decade

Whoever’s using the phone is a damn heavy user, considering you get 500texts and 100mins free. I have all the numbers they’ve called, too.

UPDATE: First recorded voice call on the bill was on the 1st December…I didn’t send it back until the 5th. So it didn’t get lost en route; a cloned number, maybe? Or duplicate?

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3 Responses to “Ballistic Duck Bill”

1 Ben Dec 29th, 2003 at 1:10 pm

All I can say is “damn”. Hope you have more success than my sister at getting it sorted out!
2 Edward Dec 29th, 2003 at 5:46 pm

I’d phone up O2 and make a song and dance about it if I were you! It does seem rather ridiculous that O2 can’t recognise whether it is the correct mobile or not. I thought that with GSM mobiles this process was supposed to be much, much harder. For 02 to have lost your phone to a bunch of hackers so quickly seems quite unusual.
(insider????)
Surely when they see two mobiles connected *-their-* network they should suspect something and immediately cut connection to your phone for ten minutes (and then send a sms to your phone to inform you).

Why don’t you phone up the numbers (using a witheld number), and ask for the people’s details? Or perhaps speak to your bank and ask them to rescue the money (they legally have to).
If O2 are useless, then when you phone next ask them whether they contacted the police or not, and make the point that you have heard this to be a regular occurence with O2…
… and then speak to someone high up and inform them that these things are going on.
3 Andrew Dec 29th, 2003 at 8:48 pm

it’s a bit difficult to phone them when their customer service number just beeps To be fair I haven’t tried it recently, shall have to give it another go tomorrow. I’ll send them a snotty letter if I don’t have any joy, then get onto Egg about returning the original payment (though I’ve already paid that credit card statement)

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