Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

[PlanB]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Do I have to go back to Hackney to report this?
Can I report it to my local police station outside London?

Since this crime was committed in the London area you can report it online using the Metropolitan Police service website. Here's the link :typing:

https://online.met.police.uk/

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Lee may need you to say this verbally to him to be able to go in to the account.

IF the calls were made from the iphone and Lee cant (and Lee is bloody good at his job) find a record of them, your account was not accessed at all. IF this is the case, anything they do will be goodwill.. when you hear all our calls are recorded, they can mean up to 75%

Hi Puff,
When you say 75% only, does that mean my call on the 15th may not have been recorded? Thats the only slim piece of 'evidence' I have :tinysmile_cry_t:

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Since there is no time limit for reporting a crime to the police why don't you do that now. Tell them you reported it to the CSPO and give them the day/time :mod: The you'll have a crime reference number won't you :high5:

https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q585.htm

I know this forum has no expertise on crime, but I'll ask a silly question anyway (never stopped me before!).
Do I have to go back to Hackney to report this?
Can I report it to my local police station outside London?

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

One other thing, I know exactly where I was during the call on the 15th, as I was in the carephone warehouse shop outside London, and with the assistant who would remember me and verify this (plus I have receipts etc for the temp phone I bought there). If the phone was being used in London at the same time (which I guess it could have been if it had heavy usage that day) I was 50 miles away (2 hours drive with London traffic on a weekday)

[PlanB]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

IF the calls were made from the iphone and Lee cant . . . . find a record of them, your account was not accessed at all. IF this is the case, anything they do will be goodwill.. when you hear all our calls are recorded, they can mean up to 75%

^^^^ Do you mean the calls the OP made to Vodafone or the calls the thief made to Romania? I think the the OP said earlier that he called Vodafone from a call box in the street not his iphone (obviously because it had been stolen at that point) to report the theft on the day it happened hone:

Maybe I'm just getting confused about which calls Lee can't trace :confused2:

[Hurricane Puffrose]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Lee may need you to say this verbally to him to be able to go in to the account.

IF the calls were made from the iphone and Lee cant (and Lee is bloody good at his job) find a record of them, your account was not accessed at all. IF this is the case, anything they do will be goodwill.. when you hear all our calls are recorded, they can mean up to 75%

[PlanB]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Since there is no time limit for reporting a crime to the police why don't you do that now. Tell them you reported it to the CSPO and give them the day/time :mod: The you'll have a crime reference number won't you :high5:

https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q585.htm

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

Hi All,
Lee called, so this is is partly directed straight at him but also to keep this post updated.
Lee asked if I could call BT with the postcode of the premises and find out whether any calls were made to their number from the public boxes nearby. I just did this and they said they cannot give that information to members of the public. They said that info could only be given if it involved a crime and I said it did. But, even if I had a crime number the info could only be given directly to the police and only if it related to a 'serious' crime or related to the phonebox itself (if that makes sense).
He did apologise in not calling my crime serious, and this info was given after I asked about reporting the crime after the fact and supplying a crime number.
So, I do not know where that leaves me (please....no sayings involving a 'creek' and a 'paddle'!).
Lee - could you trace the IMEI number of the Romanian calls?
Could you also look to my records and see the time of the call I made on the 15th to Vodafone, and cross reference it with any calls made to Romania that day?
Could you also listen to that call on the off-chance I may have slipped in the fact that my phone was stolen? The call and PAC request was done by a friendly guy at Carphone Warehouse, so he did most of the talking and then gave me the phone for verification. But, I did talk a little and may have mentioned it. Also, I did explain the whole situation to the guy at Carphone Warehouse so he may also have mentioned my phone had been stolen when he called Vodafone. Its a long shot but I seem to be failing in supplying anything remotely helpful to my case.
Thanks!

[Hurricane Puffrose]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

I have no idea whether Vodafone can cross-check the IMEI number relating to the calls made to Romania -

i didnt say this but, yes they can

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

In Hackney even a five year old knows how to bypass the pin-lock on a stolen phone :cell:

oops! Things have changed at school since I was 5, if thats what they teach in Hackney :-)

[PlanB]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

My phone was pin-locked. So, I guess the SIM must have been removed otherwise they couldnt have used the phone. Is that correct?

In Hackney even a five year old knows how to bypass the pin-lock on a stolen phone :cell:

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

There's also the possibility that your stolen iphone was in one place (in the pocket of whoever bought it for £20 ) while your *SIM* card was talking to Romania from another unlocked handset which would have a different IMEI number. That's the normal pattern with stolen phones.

I have no idea whether Vodafone can cross-check the IMEI number relating to the calls made to Romania - I certainly know MI5 can :spy: They can also trace where (geographically speaking) the SIM and handset were at the time of the call. Because if those calls weren't made from your handset then it may not have been you. The balance of probabilities kicks in at that point even in the absence of hard evidence.

My phone was pin-locked. So, I guess the SIM must have been removed otherwise they couldnt have used the phone. Is that correct?

[PlanB]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

The Romanian calls were consistent throughout the period of the 13th-21st March (very heavy usage every day, not just one call). This includes the 15th March when I was in carphone warehouse speaking to Vodafone. Vodafone have that call on record, and so there is a good chance (havent been lucky in this situation so far but you never know!!) that at the time recorded of that call between myself and vodafone, my stolen phone was speaking to Romania.

There's also the possibility that your stolen iphone was in one place (in the pocket of whoever bought it for £20 ) while your *SIM* card was talking to Romania from another unlocked handset which would have a different IMEI number. That's the normal pattern with stolen phones.

I have no idea whether Vodafone can cross-check the IMEI number relating to the calls made to Romania - I certainly know MI5 can :spy: They can also trace where (geographically speaking) the SIM and handset were at the time of the call. Because if those calls weren't made from your handset then it may not have been you. The balance of probabilities kicks in at that point even in the absence of hard evidence.

[sonnyboy]

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

the OP might have let someone make a call on his phone not knowing it was to romania unless we know where everone he knows was on the day of the calls how can we say truth or not,I have an pen mind on all of this i cannot say for sure whats the truth How can anyone ,there needs be be something more than we are being told,there must be a record of call or computer log >lets hope Lee from Vodaphone can help here

I realise you are on the fence with the whole situation, but I can only say what happened whether this sounds right to you or not. The Romanian calls were consistent throughout the period of the 13th-21st March (very heavy usage every day, not just one call). This includes the 15th March when I was in carphone warehouse speaking to Vodafone. Vodafone have that call on record, and so there is a good chance (havent been lucky in this situation so far but you never know!!) that at the time recorded of that call between myself and vodafone, my stolen phone was speaking to Romania.

Re: Vodafone charging me £1300 after phone was stolen!!

I cant beleive phone calls are not recorded ?im positive that when an account is accessed on the Vodaphone computers this is logged it must be to cover Vodaphone also is it a DPA requirement,as i have stated before it all dont add up but i support the OP in trying to sort it and get the bill reduced,we can only guess what has happened but as there is no real evidence we will all draw our own conclusions

After working in a call centre myself for a few months, while calls may not be physically recorded, I too am surprised there is no record of it. We had to record every contact with screen notes. Having said that, I know at times when things were incredibly busy, or if you just hit the wrong CSO, things did go wrong and no record was made.

As regards the DPA, these are the three of the eight underlying principles which would, IMO, mainly apply in this case:

3. Adequate, relevant and not excessive.
4. Accurate and up to date.
5. Not kept any longer than necessary.

It's not hard to argue either way that there should be a computer note about the call or that there shouldn't. In my view, there should, but as I said, things do go wrong. If things have gone wrong, then the customer should receive a degree of compensation.

Equally, there is always an onus on the customer to keep certain relevant records themselves in these situations, and those are failing up until the call on the 15th in this case.

The sudden tendency to call abroad should, again IMO, go heavily in the OP's favour.