Premium Rate Number

[forgemotorsport]

Hello. We're trying to get a complaint resolved (we're one step from requesting a letter of deadlock and going to the communications ombudsman) as we have a line which has no proof of contract (many attempts of asking) that has been calling a premium rate phone number daily racking up £000's a month. Does anyone have experience of this, specifically the number 08705134369?

Thanks

[iniltous]

Perhaps you offer be a little more detail, are you saying the line making the call isn’t your responsibility, or that it your responsibility but you claim it’s outside of any minimum term .

Do you want to cancel this line and the early termination charges are such that you can’t ( due to the financial hit ) or you want to continue with the line just not pay for calls made on it ( presumably you dispute that the calls were made on the line ) 

Why haven’t you applied PRCB ( premium rate call barring ) to the line  ? 
As far as proof of contract, I would  think not that many could ‘find’ proof of contract, after all emails can be deleted, postal Mail can be thrown away , but verbal contract is still a contract ,

If  you  deny you are within a minimum term , you should be told when the ‘contract’ was agreed and the term ( even if you don’t have a record of this , BT will ) , even if you don’t accept the date as accurate, many things can renew a contract for a new minimum , if you are actually saying it’s not a line that ‘belongs’ to you but you are being billed for it , how did that line get set up and your payment details entered ? .

[garybs29]

Obvious thing that springs to mind straight away, is there an alarm connected to the line?

[forgemotorsport]

Hello. Thanks for the reply and good questions.

The fact is that the line is making these premium rate calls, from 12.01 am until 11.59pm, every few minutes, for no more than 20 seconds at a time. A call to the number yields no answer other than a high pitch tone, implying that the call is not being made by a person.

With regards to the PRCB, we were initially told 'as it's a PSTN line, this is not possible', as well as receiving a usage breakdown, of which, we were also told was not possible initially, and was only provided this by the 4th representative we spoke to. 

With regards to the contract, we were initially told the contract was until 2028 (again, with no proof of when a contract was agreed), then 2025, and then told we were out of contract - all without being provided proof of contract, or a contract agreement date as you've suggested. 

Very simply, we just need an understanding of the charges on this line (it took weeks of being declined for a usage breakdown before we could simply see why the charges were racking up), and a factual statement of when we signed the contract and when it is out of contract - again, we aren't being given this information after literally hours being spent trying to gather this. 

With regards to an alarm line, this was our initial thought but we are currently on a dual sim set up and the usage charges have only starting stacking up over the past few months - an advisor from the complaints team also said this wasn't the case when I proposed that theory to him

[iniltous]

Your alarm line is obviously dialing a modem at yiur alarm company HQ , the fact you have an alarm associated with this directory number that can make automated calls , regardless of what your alarm company say , is almost certainly the issue .

The fact is , when something like an alarm attempts to call  ‘home’ , if it doesn’t get the required response, it will try again and again until it dies get the required response.

It seems to me your alarm company has done a poor job of moving your alarm from PSTN calling to mobile calling , it may even be doing both , they may have removed your PSTN account at their end ,hence the alarm never getting the required response, but  they have failed to stop your alarm equipment calling ‘home’ on the PSTN line

Basically they have allowed it to continue to make calls that will never get the correct response they used to get ,  so it will attempt the same call again and again , each time attracting a call setup fee which will be more than the few seconds of call time before that call is cleared and a new one attempted.

In that scenario it matter little if you think you are within or not within a minimum term , ( that’s something of a red herring  ) the calls are chargeable, if your alarm provider has , by their error removed the automatic response to your alarm system PSTN calls ( so no longer one call a day or whatever the previous frequency was )  , it becomes dozens of calls a day as it’s continually attempts to get the required response that’s not a BT problem.

Your  anger ought to be with the alarm company for leaving your alarm kit to continually make calls that can never be satisfactorily answered by your alarm company system, hence the continual retrying of your alarm kit , sorry to say but unless your alarm company make an offer to pay ( and fix their error ) you have no real complaint…TBH , it may have been appropriate to have said this was an alarm line in the first place .