Phantom outgoing calls on landline

[st4nley]

Hi,

Having received my latest bill I was surprised to see £18 worth of calls on the landline, which is odd because we don't make outgoing calls on the landline, only on our mobiles.  On contacting Vodafone via webchat on 4th Nov, I was told it's impossible for calls to appear on your bill unless you have physically made those calls.  Well, I can guarantee that we did not make those calls ourselves as there is a call log on the handset and it shows nothing.

I escalated the call to the advisors manager and he said similar, and I would have to pay, but he could put a block on outgoing calls, which I asked him to go ahead and action.

The calls are all to local numbers and on calling some of them from my mobile to see who they are, they are answered with a message  "this number is no longer in service" with a suggestion to ring 118xxx directory services".  One goes through to a local garage and two calls are to the speaking clock, dialled with "123" and with "12314111"  which leads me to suspect these numbers are not being called manually, and they all show as zero seconds duration as if they cut off immediately they are answered.  Here's a list of some of the numbers:

221133

611111

413221

411422

413321

221351

411211

These calls seem to be at any hour of the day, and multiple times every day from 22nd Oct to 31st Oct after which they stop. 

I've wracked my brains trying to think if there's anything in the house that could do this and have drawn a blank.

We have had a lot of visits by openreach to the comm boxes on the street just lately, could this be caused externally?  In my mind I know it has to be, or Vodafone's system is at fault.

[AnnS]

These are numbers used by Openreach to test the line @st4nley

Openreach should be using a special freefone number to test the line and certainly shouldn't be calling the speaking clock leaving the customer to pick up the bill and the charges should be removed.

I would suggest you contact the Social Team for them to investigate here: Contact Us  Alternatively, there is always the complaints process here: Complaints 

[st4nley]

Hi @AnnS 

Thank you for the reply, very interesting about the openreach engineers.  Would that account for some of these calls being made at 3:30 am and other unsocial hours?  

I will contact the socials team.

Regards

[st4nley]

I should stress I was not aware of any issues with our line or broadband, and assume Openreach have been there for the new fibre rollout that has chewed the towns roads up for the last 6 months or so.

[SodaphoneUser88]

Hi just wondering if you were able to resolve this / get your money back

I have the exact same issue with my landline making calls to talking clock and similar local numbers 123111 etc

But i don't even have a phone that I use

[st4nley]

Sorry, no. In the end I just paid as it was taking so much of my time. I was getting nowhere so I asked Vodafone to put a complete block on outgoing calls and vowed to leave them at the earliest opportunity, which I have now done. [Removed]

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