Phone Fraud

[Anonymous]

I recently had my phone stolen from my handbag in a nightclub. I am a student that lives in student halls so i do not have a landline, and therefore it took me around 24hours to get in touch with o2 to bar my sim. (in this time, however, it was reported to the police and i do have a crime number) in this time, whoever had my phone has ran up a bill of £240 on international calls. Am i still liable for this? And what do i do if i physically do not have the money to pay for somebody elses calls which i did not make, as my insurance only covers the phone, no calls.
Thanks, Ciara.

[Anonymous]

who is our insurance with??

[Anonymous]

Who is the insurance with? If its with o2 it should cover the calls.


I'm afraid that if your insurance doesn't cover the calls then you are liable for the calls until you phoned up to put the bar on the phone. You should be able to set up a payment plan to pay the balanace off over a set term on top of your normal monthly line rental.

[Anonymous]

if you have calls made on your account after it has been stolen/lost if you do not report it to place a bar, you are liable for the calls. have you called and spoken to customer services and explained what has happened. if they6 do set you up on a payment plan, you may be restricted to incoming calls only until it is cleared. if you speak to customer service see if they can do anything, they may be able to split the bill into 2 parts, or if you want it spead over a longer period you will need to speak to debt assistance re a payment plan

[Anonymous]

Am i still liable for this?

Absolutely.

The best thing to do is to give O2 a call and reason with them. It took you about 24 hours to report it lost, which I would have thought is quite typical. It's not as if you've been completely irresponsible and left it a week before reporting it stolen.

I would hope that O2 wouldn't want to profit from criminal activity due to the misfortune of one of their customers. I would point this out to them and you may get a reduction. It may also be worth reminding them that they have a extremely healthy profit margin on international calls, which means they can reduce the figure by a sizable amount.

Explain the above calmly and politely and also let them know that it would be physically impossible for you to pay the bill as you're a student. Be bold and offer to pay the £40 if they remove the remaining £200. They may not agree, but are likely to offer you a bigger discount than if you offered to pay £200 if they removed £40, for example.

Once you've spoken to them reply to this thread to let us know how you got on. Good luck.