Home phone hacked!! Where do we stand?

[worrierandwine]

We're waiting for a call back from BT but our provider EE are saying that several calls have been made to mobiles and businesses from our landline. We don't have a home phone at all, just the line to enable us to have broadband so it would have been impossible for us to make these calls. Also, we have never made calls from our landline before obviously. We can't prove we were physically out of the house on any of these days as I'm on mat leave at the moment. EE have said they can't see that our line has been hacked and say we will have to pay the bill to prevent us from being cut off and dispute it later. This doesn't seem fair or right as we haven't made these calls and wish to dispute. Does anyone have any advice as to what we should do?

Don't wait for a call back, call them! Why should you have to paay when you don't even have a phone? We have broadband and a line but no phone, so we wouldn't be able to make calls either. I absolutely would not be paying for this, sounds like a scam

I would call them and try and get it sorted, don't wait for them to call you.

That's what I said to DH when he was on the phone to them. Sounds like a scam! He was talking to EE and EE said they would call BT and get them to "check the line" . It all sounded very dodgy but they said we have to pay it first and dispute it later.

Ok, first off the landline itself is unlikely to be hacked. It is usually done via a device connected to your landline- do you have a Sky box, alarm system or any other sort of smart device that uses your landline? Are you sure the contact you have had is actually from EE? Have they given you any alternative payment details etc? Call BT yourself so you can be sure it is actually BT you are speaking to. If EE called you, call them on the number on your normal bills and check it was them who called.

Did you get a bill in the post or just a phone call asking for money?

DoWop We logged on to our EE account to pay the bill and saw how much higher than normal it was and then rang the usual EE number ourselves to be told the extra charges were these calls supposedly made from our landline. We do have a sky box and a now TV box but have had these both for a while. When my husband called again he spoke to a lady who said she could see we have never used our home phone before so agrees it would be strange for us to start suddenly ringing mobiles and businesses from our landline. We both have mobile contracts with EE with unlimited calls to other mobiles and landlines so obviously we use our mobiles. It's just very strange. I'm waiting for DH to get back from work then let him call BT as he's brilliant on the phone with things like this and stays very calm. I'm ashamed to say I just lose my shit and then end up getting nothing out of them

Are the numbers itemised on your bill? Could you call one of the numbers and ask who called them from your landline number?

I'm not sure if the bill is itemised as DH usually just logs on and pays the broadband as that's normally all that needs paying for. I've just no idea how this happened. The calls started mid- November and carried on through to mid December. Coincidentally right after we renewed our contract with EE, I'm wondering if it's their mistake and they've got our bill mixed up with someone else's? But the first man DH spoke to was adamant these calls had come from our phone line.

Buy a cheap plug in phone. Check you have a dial tone then dial 17070, choose option 1 and it will tell you the number your line is connected to. If this is different to the number you should have you have a crossed line.

Thanks Blythe I did wonder if we had a crossed line. Will try that.

I am a member of the Motherload on FB and saw this posted there (not sure if relevant at all but wanted to let you know): If any of you MOLOs have EE broadband please check how much your last bill is, i got charged an extra 57 pound because BT did some work in the area and charged EE customers for it by mistake, i checked if i hadnt called would i have got a refund they said no, so please if you have your broadband with EE double check your bill and if its more than you expected call them you may be due a refund x

Thanks DoWop - yet another reason not to trust them!

u need to ring ee bt won't be able to help you, your service provider is ee it would be like going into the halifax with a query on your santander account . ee is your communications provider. if you will they rent a line off open reach (owned by bt but separate think British gas transco) then ee rents it to you. bt will not have any access to your account you are not there customer. open reach who provides the line to ee will only deal with ee you cannot contact them direct this is part of there licensing agreement they don,t deal with customer only service providers ee then ee deal with you worked for open reach for years can honestly say never come across hacked line in 24 years if some one had hacked into it this would affect your broadband as they would be connected before filters going back 15 ears did a stint in customer service all query over calls turned out to be computer related i.e. computer dialling phone numbers or kid in house i would do like previous person suggested by plugging phone in and checking that its your number is correct

dowop the only people who can charge you is your service provider bt can,t add charges to people accounts your bill that was overcharge by £57 came from ee they overcharged you not bt

Thanks rwalker, that's really helpful. I'll check the computer for any calls that could have been made. I hope it can all be sorted out.

The other thing is to look up the phone numbers on the Internet and see what they say they are - just google each number.

Do this before ringing them just in case the numbers are scam ones that charge loads per call!

If they seem to be legitimate numbers then ringing them and explaining what has happened might provide some answers or at least clues if you say you

Gah. Miss hit post button.

Was trying to say if you ring them from another number and say that they have been rung by your number and could they tell you what other info they have associated to the number please - might get some help.

Is it also worth asking to talk to the we fraud team to see if they can help you?

Just wondering if your wifi is well protected , though don't know if this would be a risk. Perhaps change the password.

We're still waiting to hear back from EE, DH is doing the typical man thing of "ignorance is bliss" but I think we should be pestering them to find out what's going on. He says we left it that they were going to contact us so to just wait until they do...he'll soon spring into action when they cut us off!
I did think about ringing these numbers or googling to find out who they are, I'm guessing they're all dodgy ones!

Not sure how well protected our wifi is, we have a password which I don't even know!

EE are a bunch of twats. When I had a new contract with them for broadband and landline, they connected my phone number to the wrong house. When anyone phoned me, they got a strange couple in another part of the city. When I called out on the mine, it wasn't my number which came up at the other end, proving a crossed line.

They insisted they're was voting wring, because they had phoned and spoken to my husband. I was single, living in a one bedroom flat and no man anywhere in the scene. They were insistent that my husband had confirmed on my phone number that they had no issues with the line. They had been speaking to the man of the other couple.

I had to go ballistic to get anything done. After two weeks they sent out an engineer, tried to charge me £250 for the privilege. He was mad when he looked at it, said it was an obvious crossed line, rang some department or other and 2mins later it was sorted.

I refused to pay my bill for that month, and argued 6 months free for the billion calls I'd had to make to their patronising call centres. Unfortunately the call centres were not in the UK, meaning some difficulties with language comprehension at times plus the fact most of their teams ran off scripts and were unable to hold natural conversations.

Good luck OP!

Voting wring = nothing wrong

Vivienne - first of all - brilliant username
I've already resigned myself to the fact it's going to take ages to sort out. Thanks for sharing your story, shows they do make mistakes, it's just proving it!!

EE accidentally merged my account with someone elses a while back. Told me I had a contract for an ipad and extra phone on my account even gave me the number of the phone and the address it had been delivered to. I reported the person for fraudulently taking out contracts in my name with my bank details. Then EE said ooops we've merged your account with another customer and sorted it out

Keep chasing them about it and make sure they log it as an official complaint