Mobile phone bill

[Mr B]

Hi, not sure if this should go here, but I'm sure it'll be moved if needed.

My daughter is on contract with O2, 600 minutes and god knows how many texts for £35.00 per month. Her bills have always been around the £45 mark as she goes slightly over each month.

Last September she left her phone in a taxi, but the driver said he hadn't seen it.

Since then her bills have been around the £90 mark each month. As soon as she realised she wasn't going to get it back, she got O2 to block the phone and give her the original number back. She then bought a new phone.

O2 have said that she has used her phone to run up her bills and won't do anything to investigate.

Is it possible that someone could be getting free calls from their phone and my daughter being charged...ie has her phone been cloned.

I've told her to stop using her phone for a month and use one of the many spare ones we've got kicking about on a pay as you go sim. Then if she doesn't make any calls...her bill should be no more than £35 next month.

What do you reckon has happened and what action, if any can we take.

I know absolutely nothing on this subject, so if anyone has any advice for us....we'd be very grateful.

Brian.

[robbiemac]

As soon as a mobile phone gets lost/stolen, report it to the Police and get a crime number. Get the Mobile phone Operator to block the phone, they may want the crime number. deffo need the crime number for insurance purposes.
If she had not reported it missing/stolen/lost before the bills came in it looks like she will have to be liable for that, sorry.

Has she got itemized billing? might be able to use the numbers to investigate who is getting called/doing the calling.

hope this helps.

[Monkeybrain]

My presumption here is that your daughter has now reported her phone as stolen and her provider, O2, have sent her a new SIM card.

If that is the case the old sim should have had its serial number removed from the service.

The phone number itself is a layer on the system which is there for ease of use by us humans. The number can be transfered to any SIM and it is the SIM's serial number that is used by the network.

Once the old sim was killed by O2, it should no longer influence your daughters bill.

The only way to clone a GSM phone is by having physical access to the current SIM card, there is kit that will clone the card in about 3 minutes.

That said there cannot be 2 SIMs with the same serial number on the network at the same time, cloning is possible but highly improbable.

(In all of this the handset has no influence, its the SIM that controls access to the network.)

Your daughter should be scrutinising her itemised bill and asking the service providers what IMEI numbers (handset serial numbers) are responsible for the calls.


HIH

[Limey_Dave]

Maybe she should check if her contract terms are still the same.
It could be they've changed with the new phone due to terms in small print or they just got it wrong when they gave her old number back.
I would ask them(not tell and ask for confirmation,the easy option is just say yes) "what contract am I on?"

She could be making the calls and just being charged more.