Phantom calls to 123 - check your phone bills.

It's not just a problem suffered by PlusNet customers I know.

Does everybody check their monthly phone accounts? If not then they should.

I look at mine probably once a week and I just came across a call that has been charged to me that I imagine was made by an engineer while testing. A 1 minute call to 123 , are there still people around who use the telephone to find out what the time is??? I'm surrounded by devices that are correct to the second because they regularly update themselves automatically and without any charge.

Interesting observations from A&A about engineers calling 123, the linked blog entry is also worth a read:

http://www.revk.uk/2015/11/fraudulent-calls-to-123.html

Yes IIRC I saw that the last time this happened to me. TBH if you Google "call to 123" or something similar it's amazing to see how long this has been going on and how many people are affected.

PlusNet just rang me to say the charge has been removed so that has been sorted very quickly - raised the ticket yesterday evening and it's done and dusted.

Funnily enough (says he tongue in cheek) at the time the call was made, there was an fault open on my line which was rectified the same day!

It is shocking that this is still happening, why don't they just dial 17070 or some other non-chargeable number?

In reply to a post by kasg:

why don't they just dial 17070 or some other non-chargeable number?/quote]
Just pure laziness I suspect. They should swap the 'destination' of 123 and something suitable which is much more difficult to dial quickly.

Edited by longedge (Tue 17-Oct-17 12:49:44)

This was happening in 2008 - don't they ever learn!?

Engineer should use their own [censored] mobile phone, not using the household phone line.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Engineer should use their own [censored] mobile phone, not using the household phone line.

That wouldn't help them much though if the reason they are dialling it is to check the line rather than to actually find out the time.

They should change to 0800 not 123 (chargable calls)

I was about to ask the same question when I came across your comment.

Given that 17070, if available, also gives particularly the Phone Number apart from other generally "useful to engineers" information, it does seem strange.