Recently I discovered that O2 has billed me £150 for a mobile phone call it says I made to Armenia at 5am on 25 June.
As I was safely tucked up in bed at home, with my phone nearby, there was no way I could have made that call.
Trying to get this refunded has been impossible. I first tried the O2 shop in Havant, but it said it could not help. When I called the main contact centre, which was obviously not in the UK, I could not get it to believe that I did not make the call.
By looking at my phone records, O2 could easily see that I use my phone rarely, do not travel abroad, and have no contacts outside the UK.
I am in my 70s and retired, and don’t feel O2 has treated me fairly.
DB, Hants
I asked O2 about your case, and after carrying out a full investigation, it has decided that you must have fallen victim to a “Wangiri scam”.
Wangiri is a Japanese word that means “one ring and cut”. Fraudsters attempting this scam will ring from a premium rate or international number and quickly hang up in the hope that a victim will call them back.
If someone does, the fraudsters will try to keep them on the line for as long as possible to run up expensive call charges.
In January we reported on the case of a five-hour call to Tunisia, also involving O2, that the company put down to the same scam.
I am not sure I am convinced by that explanation in this case, as you say you were tucked up in bed at the time. I guess that it’s possible that you pocket dialled this number by accident and the call time is wrong, but this seems unlikely. However, O2 is adamant that a call charge can’t be applied to a customer’s account without it happening.
Fortunately, you don’t need to concern yourself as, after our intervention, it has refunded you the £150 charge as a gesture of goodwill. Given the problems with sim card swap fraud at O2 I’d be keeping a very close eye on my account.
I think you have already put a bar on international and premium rate numbers, which I would have recommended.
I would also suggest you apply a spend cap to your account of, say, £10. This means your bill can only go £10 over your contracted amount.
O2 says customers can report suspicious calls from abroad by emailing nuisance@telefonica.com to allow it to bar the number on its network.
Has anyone else experienced this? Email the usual address.
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