Phantom number when abroad 447785016005

[adminenlan]

Hi, I had an charge of £15 appear on my monthly bill. It related to when I was in NZ for a holiday recently and was because vodafone had logged 447785016005 as a number I had texted several times on two different dates. I have never texted the number. I have no evidence on my smartphone of incoming, outgoing texts (or calls for that matter) on my logs or in my text records and in fact sent a total of 4 texts in three weeks to colleagues as I didnt want to use the phone. I couldnt get Vodafone to verify that this number was in fact texted and they couldnt validate the charge so they refunded me. Going online, the number seems to raise flags going back to 2010 and I am not the only one who had the same happen to them. Its odd. If it was a number causing problems dont Vodafone themselves bar the number?  I wonder how many havent even noticed this type of phantom charge.

[AnnS]

Hi @adminenlan

This is the number of the Vodafone UK text messaging centre, you will always see this number when you send a text and are overseas on a roaming network.  The reason for this is when you are roaming you are charged the standard price of the text, plus the extra roaming charge.

Having mentioned that if you pay monthly and are roaming you would have been charged the £6.00 daily roam further charge which would have included any calls, texts and data used whilst you were in New Zealand.

[Anonymous]

Please ignore....

[Anonymous]

Isn't that the number of Vodafone's UK SMS server ?  Whenever you send a text from outside the UK it has to pass through this device in order to be delivered to the recipient, and the number appears on your bill as a "call" each time you do so. However so long as you are in a country where you can use your normal bundled allowances you shouldn't be charged for doing so - if you're outside that zone then yes there'll be a charge for each SMS.  At least that's how I remember it. 

[adminenlan]

Thank you, that sounds totally plausible so thanks. What is odd is the Vodafone online chat guy didnt know that, but then they probably have lots of numbers like that.  

[Getafix]

The Number is the Vodafone SMS centre.

In the main section of the Bill you will see the actual number you sent the text to.

[adminenlan]

Yep. I can sort of see that (the time zone has confused one of the entries as I responded to a colleague on 29th and the now explained vodafone sms server shows the following day.