free phone calls
Back in the mid 90s when mobile calls actually cost a fair amount there was a fairly good scam going on with one2one phones for unlimited free messages. Because all of their tariffs offered free voice mail retrieval, you could dial into other people’s voicemail boxes for free across the network. Simple enough to do, just check your voicemail number on your phone’s settings and give it to your mates. When they called it from their phone it went straight to the record a message bit – free call for them because they were calling a one2one voicemail box and free retrieval for you. For about 2 years, all of my mates who had mobile phones were on the cheapest one2one deal and never paid anything other than the monthly fee as we only ever spoke via voicemails. It was all quite fun until one chap we’d mentioned it to liked the sound of it so popped to the carphone warehouse, bought a one2one mobile and tried to work out his voicemail number. He couldn’t find it in the settings, so called their customer services and asked them how to find it, explaining why he needed it. The bastard got our free call loophole shut down within a week and subsequently regular dead arms from his mates for the next few months.

Not particularly interesting or disastrous actually, but it pissed me off at the time. A few years later though, one2one paid me to accept a new contract as they realised the mistake of unlimited free evening and weekend calls – 200 quid, which was nice.
(Alphabet Soap boshboshboshbosh, Tue 4 Aug 2009, 11:35, Reply)