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?

Thanks Glovebug there's definitely something fishy going on and we won't be bullied into paying. We've made a note of the dates, times and names of people we've spoken to so far.

Can you make sure you pay the normal part of your bill so it's only the disputed bit that you haven't paid, so that you can show you are not trying to get out of that (and not get charges etc if it doesn't get paid or is paid late).

Definitely think it is worth googling the numbers in case they throw up any clues!

Yes we've already paid the usual bill confuugled as we thought the same!

I agree with pp, it's very odd for a phone line to be hacked.

Have you checked the dates and times of the calls? Were you home? Could it have been anyone else - babysitter, cleaner, MIL?! Or do you have any teenagers at home?

I'd also google the phone numbers and see what comes up.

My point with the crossed line is that this could be the same here - have you rung "your" phone number to see what happens?

We're not sure if it's a crossed line as we don't even have a house phone so I need to buy one before I can dial the number to check. I'm sure it's a mistake on their behalf as the only people who live here/ have been here are myself, DH, 4 year old and 9 month old. This is why I'm 100% the calls haven't been made from our number - we don't have a house phone! The only device my 4 year old uses is the iPad, I'm not sure how they think we've made these calls!

Can't you ring your allocated number from a mobile? If someone answers, you know what's happening!

Just called our "number" and it's just ringing. Apparently, amongst mobile calls, there are also calls to a local taxi service, local takeout and a garden company. EE are still adamant the calls could have only come from our phone but we keep telling them we don't have a phone. Husband has asked for an engineer to be sent out, just waiting on a reply.

DH just got off the phone to them, they've taken the calls off! DH said she was a sarcastic bitch...it's not something they routinely do but have done it as a "goodwill gesture" and "to prevent the complaint escalating". If they truly believed we had made these calls I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have just taken them off the bill like that. Anyway, we have placed a bar on our line to prevent any outgoing calls so we can't be accused of it again. Thanks everyone for advice, thankfully it's sorted!

This happened to us with virgin
Same as you no phone plugged in but needed it for the package with virgin. Suddenly a bill comes in with all these calls that wasn't us.
I phoned my number and someone else answered, called virgin and apparently our lines got switched somewhere. They switched it back and I didn't have to pay.
Glad it's all sorted for you.

Just been woken up by flashing lights, looked outside and there are 2 Openreach vans and a BT van working outside at 12 at night! Unless they're putting fibre optic in there's obviously something wrong with the lines.

Glitteryfluff thanks yes it's sorted. It's interesting how many others have had the same problem!

Hopefully you putting a block on outgoing calls will at least give you more evidence that the calls aren't originating with you, and at best will put a stop to the problem.

So annoying when you can't speak to anyone that knows what they are actually talking about...