A large British Telecommunications company and criminal activity
A few years back, before I realised what broadband actually was and I didn't need wide fibre optic cables, I assumed I could only get dial up at my house.
My only option for internet goodness was a large British Telecommunications company, so i called them and requested they add dial up to my account.

The did, and without any aggravation. great!

After a few telephone bills of about £40, I recieved a bill in the region of £400.
I called the billing dept and queried the bill, they said it was right and that I was calling premium numbers for internet... you all know the story, I'm sure

I asked why this wasn't flagged as unusual given that my bills were usually a tenth of this and they responded, saying it didn't seem unusual to them. I don't remember what I said to that, but i'm sure it would've contained 'c', 'unt' and probably 's'

I assured them that I was, in no uncertain terms, not going to pay the bill and that if they wanted the money they should try really hard and bend their semi erect man sausages back between their legs and stuff it up their own diseased rectums.

I had hoped that was enough to put an end to the matter, but no, they decided to write to me, threatening court action unless I paid the bill.

I wrote back advising them that I was clearly a victim of a crime and that the large British Telecommunication company were well aware of this happening and had been for some time, and that demanding money in relation to this was profiting from criminal enterprise, which I was pretty sure was also illegal.

They never bothered me about it after that.


I heard later they were telling the press/watchdog/whoever that any profits they made from these bills was going to be given to charity


If you read all the way to the end, I apologise; writing's never been my forte
( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 11:47, 12 replies)

Ditto
Virgin Media tried this with me once when someone hijacked my line to contact an ISP for 10 days solid. Unfortunately for them this was in the middle of a period when my phone line wasn't working.
(BearWithLittleBrain, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 12:36, closed)

You assured them that you were going to pay?
Ummm....
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 14:27, closed)

i don't know what you mean

( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Sat 25 Feb 2012, 1:26, closed)

I used to work for Onetel
part of my job was to keep track and report the use of these.

Unfortunatley, as it wasnt the Phone companies fault the virus ended up on the machine, it was deemed the users problem. By the time i left the job, i had a list of premium rate numbers totalling over 600 in number, These were easy to shut down. however they then turned their attention to places like the Cayman islands, where BT had no control over the scam. I remember we had access to a few very remote and small island cut off to the UK purely because of this scam.

Not a nice scam.
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 14:46, closed)

i apprecaiate that it's not the phone company's problem
but the stance that bt were taking was that they couldn't give two hoots that they were paying out money to criminals as long as i paid my bill and they got their cut
( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Sat 25 Feb 2012, 1:30, closed)

You ran up a massive bill using porn-diallers,
and it was all BT's fault? Smooth. I particularly like the part where you threaten to pay the bill.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Fri 24 Feb 2012, 15:12, closed)

i really like the part where you claim i said it was BT's fault
bell end
( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Sat 25 Feb 2012, 1:55, closed)

My mistake.
You ran up a huge phone bill, then didn't want to take responsibility for it, but then offered to pay for it anyway (but have now edited your post to correct the last part). Better?
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sat 25 Feb 2012, 20:01, closed)

no, not really
if i had been intentionally calling premium rate numbers, then yes, you'd be right, but that is not the case here.
it was a computer virus that switched my dialler without my knowledge.
given that you can't spot a simple typing error either only supports my initial assesment that you're a bell end
( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Sun 26 Feb 2012, 2:20, closed)

I can secure my computer against viruses,
and notice when my phone line is being abused, though, so I do have that going for me.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Sun 26 Feb 2012, 20:51, closed)

give yourself a gold star!
at the time the anti virus programs weren't looking at rediallers and this is why so many people were effected

i'm interested to know how, on the one hand you claim you'd know when your phone line is being abused, but at the same time claim your computer is secure from what I can only assume to be all types of attack.
So, either you’ve had your phone line abused in the same way and your computer was hit by a similar scam,

or alternatively, and which is much more likely, you’re full of shit.
( real i'm not happy 'til you're not happy, Mon 27 Feb 2012, 1:23, closed)

Reminds me of when I used to do dial up support for NTL.
We had one lovely old bloke who called us literally every night, on a premium rate support line, to tell us he'd managed to install a premium dialler because "he wanted to look at the naked ladied" and now he couldn't get rid of it. The official line was that porn diallers are a third party product so we couldn't help. Nonetheless, we'd do what we could, and often manage to get our own dialler configured back as the default. Invariably, he'd end up back on a porn dialler next time he wanted to look at boobies.

After about 6 weeks of these calls, they stopped as suddenly as they started. Curious, we checked the chaps account history - we knew it by heart at this point.

Turns out he'd received his first bill for a little over £1000, made up of approx 80% porn diallers and 20% calls to our support line. He'd complained, and escalated his complaint up the ladder on the grounds that he'd contacted us every day to try and resolve the issue but we refused to help. After reviewing his case, management had written off the bill, let him out of his contract, and paid his fee to reconnect to BT just to get rid of him.
(bblgoose, Mon 27 Feb 2012, 12:54, closed)