Has My Cell Number Been Cloned? 561
2bepissedoff asks: "According to my T-mobile phone bill, I have been receiving incoming calls from a 'NBR unavailable', since February, with talk time ranging from 1 minute to an hour. The strangest thing is, I have never received these calls (my phone doesn't ring and I haven't talked to the caller). I only started noticing them when my phone bill was charged over $40 more than my regular bill. Of course, I have a family plan (2 people only, 2 lines) and I talked to my partner. The answer: he too had not received any of these calls, especially over 300 minutes per month of them. We called up T-mobile twice and claim the possibility of phone cloning. Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something. Any advice to what this could be?"
I did a little investigation and I've noticed that some of the NBR minutes overlap with calls I actually make. For example:
'2/22 at 3:28 pm "NBR unavailable" 17mins usage.
2/22 at 3:44 pm "-(# I made)---" 3mins usage.
So if you add up the time 3:28pm + 17 mins = 3:45 pm. The time when I made my call was at 3:44 pm. This reoccurs several times. I still do not think this is enough evidence to convince T-mobile of Phone Cloning. So I am thinking of switching either my number or my service provider. "
'2/22 at 3:28 pm "NBR unavailable" 17mins usage.
2/22 at 3:44 pm "-(# I made)---" 3mins usage.
So if you add up the time 3:28pm + 17 mins = 3:45 pm. The time when I made my call was at 3:44 pm. This reoccurs several times. I still do not think this is enough evidence to convince T-mobile of Phone Cloning. So I am thinking of switching either my number or my service provider. "
It's probably the NSA (Score:5, Funny)
Unknown calls are bullshit (Score:5, Interesting)
I really really hate it when companies play stupid. I lost a cell phone a while ago and went to the store. I wanted them to stop service on that line while I got another phone, and asked them if any calls had been made from the phone in the hours since I lost it. They said that they couldn't get those records. Fuck that. Say an FBI agent went into the store and needed the same information due to "Terrorisim". The information would be instant. I also asked if there was any way to guess what city the phone was in and if it was moving. They flatly responded no. (I had lost my phone in some cab I had taken that day, and if i knew what city it was in i could have called that cab company). I know that this is possible since they have been tracking down "crimials and terrorists" by using triangulation on their cell phones.
I was a paying customer standing there and being lied to. I had another problem on a land line. I was getting calls from a fax line about 10 times per night from an 'unknown' number. I called the phone company several times. They said that since it was unknown number they couldn't do anything about it. I asked if they could block that number from calling me. Nope, since it was unknown. Now what if I had called the police/fbi and said that they last number that called my fax had sent terrorist threats, or maybe that it was a person talking about their jihad. The number could have been found out within minutes.
So on your company, I also call bullshit. I am sure your records that they are turning over to big brother are accurate, and the ones they had you are probably not. Now let me go pack my things. I am sure that for thinking too much i'll be picked up any time now by the thought police.
Re:Unknown calls are bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Unknown calls are bullshit (Score:5, Informative)
Onepoint.
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:5, Informative)
Now when you make a normal phone call from a normal world zone 1 LEC (local exchange carrier) to another world zone 1 LEC or wireless company, your LEC is almost always going to transmit that data. They don't have to do it, but they usually do it. Generally it makes it much easier for the techs and the billing people when things work this way because it lets you determine if a call is interstate/intrastate (different rate tables) or it can help you track down technical problems of all kinds.
However, not every carrier sends this information. In fact, carriers with older or less complicated equipment (think phonecard companies and small international operators) sometimes can't even send ANI if they wanted to. Maybe they don't use SS7 and are using the ANI field to an identify an internal billing code. Maybe they have incompetant switch techs who don't know how to setup the signaling correctly. There are lots of legitimate reasons why a carrier would not send out ANI.
Now for the criminals--- it is VERY EASY to spoof ANI and CLID. Many telecom scams are perpetrated this way. All it takes is for the criminal to be placing calls through a carrier which allows the customer to transmit digital signaling and then sends out whatever the customer sent to the next carrier rather than building ANI from the carrier's own customer database. Virtually all LECs let you do this if you have a T1 and a PBX. Virtually all small VoIP operators let you do this as well, so long as you have the ability to transmit the signaling to them.
So getting back to the point, your carrier isn't neccesarily lying to you when they say you got a call from 'number unavailable'. Its entirely possible for a carrier NOT to get a call without an ANI. With a little research, they may be able to tell you what carrier the call originated from, but thats about it.
moron, eh? (Score:3, Informative)
the couple times i've been forced to call 911, they've certainly been able to l
Re:moron, eh? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. Be nice though, he's probably just wrong, not trolling. Not too long ago, I would have argued the same, until I found out how to do it.
ANI is spoofable on most switches. Trivially if you're using a digital service (ISDN or T1), less so on analog lines but still possible. Note that I'm not talking about Caller-ID here, but the ANI service that large T1/T3 customers get (NOT 800-only). The SS7 network is as badly designed as SMTP when it comes to spoofing.
The issue is that it was designed to be spoofable for common applications such as forwarding, so that the original ANI was forwarded to the new destination, rather then getting a call from yourself/your company. Of course, there's no way to distinguish from a forwarded call and a new call, so effectivly you create a new call with bogus ANI and then patch it in to the inbound call.
The other reason is DID lines need to be able to say what number is calling out. You could have hundreds or thousands of numbers all resolve to one trunk (Think any fortune-500 company), so it's the responsibility of the PBX to give the caller's ANI. As was pointed out on Schiner's blog, while you could filter ANI, the current software doesn't make it remotly practical to do so. So any DID line can spoof ANI.
Whee!
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:3, Informative)
Triangulation is difficult, as you describe. However, I have visited my local police communications center, and I can verify that they DO get the information about wh
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:5, Interesting)
Really? Wow. Thanks for telling me this. Nice to know it's complete rubbish. I work for a telco, and the guys across the dividers from us do live call tracing and mobile location all the time. It takes about 5-10 minutes and is usually accurate to within 200 metres. The neat part about GSM is that as your phone uses timeslots, the delay can be measured between your phone and the tower (like a ping). You then know how far away the phone is from the tower (because radio waves travel at a known speed). You phone is also always in contact with more than one cell station at a time. Add up all three factors (timeslow, delay, and different locations) and the system gives you a street name and approximate number.
Of course, this is all done after a an official document comes through with what circumstances. Usually it's for people threatening suicide. Every now and again it's a kidnapping or something major. It's harsh on these guys when their call trace comes back too late and the news the next day shows that 2 kids were kidnapped by their dad and murdered. True story - give these guys some credit.
Re:No, Technology isn't magic. (Score:4, Informative)
Just to elaborate a bit about timeslots: The GSM standards require that the phone transmit only in a defined time frame: three time slots after the phone has received the data. This gives the tower a well-defined interval during which to receive the data transmitted and to ensure that transmissions by different phones are separated by at least one guard period.
But as the distance between the tower and the cell increases, the cell phone must transmit earlier and earlier to account for the increase signal propagation delay. This process is called "adaptive frame alignment" and is determined by a parameter known as the "timing advance" parameter. The TA is dynamically updated and takes values between 0 and 63 inclusive. This parameter determines how early, in microseconds, the phone has to begin transmission, to ensure that the signal reaches the tower at the correct time, and roughly locates the phone within a specific radius around the tower.
Combining this with the fact that more than one tower usually sees the phone and the information from those other towers, the GSM system can triangulate the signal to within a couple of hundred meters, easily.
Re:It's probably the NSA (Score:5, Informative)
1) When you call customer care ask for and write the down the Care agents name. If they hang up on (unless you are being incredibily agressive and swearing) that information will be handy to their Supervisor. Call back and let that be known.
2) Both the IMEI number on the handset and Sim Care will be recorded. If both do not match on a disputed call this is strong evidence of cloning.
3) You have 3 way calling, you have voice mail - two calls at one time is not an anomaly in itself.
4) Ask for a Supervisor if you do not recieve care at a lower level.
5) View your online account and watch you billing daily if you think this is a cloning problem. Trying to remember a call from 5 weeks ago is not easy.
6) Don't dispute calls in general. Dispute specific calls. We can look up specific calls. Saying I have 47 billed minutes I didn't use means nothing. Saying, the call to 123-456-7890 on 6/03/06 at 2:57pm was not made by me. We can actually help with that.
7) Correspond via email instead of calling. Over the phone pressure exists to keep the lenght of the call down. Via email agents can research your issue without having to leave you on hold - the pressure for resolution in a 5 minute phone call is not there.
8) When you hear this often in a Call center you do become immune to it. People lie all the time - a popular one is "I have bad coverage" only to find out after reviewing their account that they've used 2800 minutes this month and are happy to accept a discounted handset with a 2 year deal. People with truly bad coverage do not renew for two years and have 2800 minutes usage per month. As such, it is easy for a Care agent to dismiss you without much investigation. Do not give up after 1 or 2 calls (or email). This does not mean that you are right, merely that your issue will be investigated more thoroughly the second or third time. This is normal in many businesses.
switching the number won't work (Score:5, Informative)
Get a new account -- new SIM's for both you and your partner and do it sooner rather than later, for your sake =)
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:4, Informative)
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Informative)
BTW, I used to work for Logica, in the telecoms division, and have a LOT of knowledge of GSM systems, and how they work. I am also a T-Mobile (UK) customer.
Remember these facts:
- A GSM phone has a unique IMEI number.
- Each GSM phone has a unique SIM card with a unique SIM number. This SIM number is attacted on a central computer to your account.
- Although the SIM card does contain your number, it is many for informative, and not operational purposes.
When you switch on your phone and it logs onto your network, it sends its IMEI number, and its SIM number to the network. The network then looks up the SIM number and associates it with a number. As it stands, only one SIM number can ever be associated with a phone number. When i tried getting a new SIM to replace my aging SIM, the old one was disconnected before the new SIM was issued, as it is simply not possible to associate a number with two SIMs. You can associate a SIM with two or more numbers, but not the other way round.
If someone HAS cloned your SIM, and both phones are attached at the same time, the network would register a fault, as a SINGLE sim number is assiciated at two different locations. It woudl create a fault in the system which would prevent both yours and the clone SIM from working. This is actually one of the main reasons why Cellphones are not usable on Planes (even if it is prooven to be safe to the electronics). The phone woudl try to log onto multiple cells at the same time, causing a lot of strain on the network, or even malfunction.
A SIM can only be "effectively" cloned if the original was never used afterwards. If both the Original SIM and the Clone was used at the same time, the network will try and continuesly switch between the two cells its registered to, unless both are on the same cell. if both are on the same cell, further issues would happen.
I am not sayign that cloning is impossible, its just extremely unlikely.
I woudl think the most likely causes of this situation are:
- Are you *sure* your partner is not recieving the calls? Really sure?
- Maybe, if you visited another country (or performed roaming) there might be some residual temporary numbers assigned to your phone.
However, the way the records are kept, you shoudl find that its pretty easy for the phone company to determine what happend. Who made the phone call, what handset was in use, where the call was recieved.
Finally I do not know the laws of the US, but here in the UK, the first point of call if you think your phone has been cloned or if your believe that a crime has been committed regarding your phone is the POLICE.
In UK, if we recieve am abusive call, calling the phone company will not be any help. They will rightly ask you to contact the police first, and they will work with the police to resolve the matter.
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, BT has a department that customers can call if they're receiving abusive calls that offers advice about how to deal with them, and actively encourages people to call them before the police. I suspect other phone companies handle it in a similar manner.
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a good example of a call I did very recently with T-Mobile, and BT. I started recieving abusive calls on both my Mobile, and my landline, with an anonymous number. I reported to both companies, who noted down the call, and ensured that evidence will be kept. then they asked me to contact the police with my details to take it further. They were unable to tell me who was doing it, without police intervention. hey both offered to change my number if I wished.
I contacted the police, and as part of the investigation, the POlice authorised a line monitor on both my lane line and my mobile, as well as records on the lines. I was then contacted by BT and T-Mobile seperately explaining how the line monitor works.
in some cases, BT may be able to respond to certain abuses quicker directly, as they own the entire network, including the lines going into your house. But with regard to a crime (which is what cloning/makign abusive calls are) they refer you to the police as well.
PS. I dont understand what part of my original post is "flamebait", as someone has modded it.
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
No, GSM can handle this quite well. In towns with a high base station density, it is also possible that multiple cells are visible.
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Informative)
That's not really a good advertisement for Logica then.
The IMEI has next to nothing to do with any sort of security function of GSM. It only identifies your handset, and some countries have a registry that they'll put your stolen phone's IMEI on so networks can prevent the handset's further use in that particular country among the operators that signed up to the registry, but IMEI is not checked against your subscription. In fact, that's one of the primary design tenets of GSM; subscription data is contained in the Subscriber Identity Module; the SIM.
is simply not possible to associate a number with two SIMs. You can associate a SIM with two or more numbers, but not the other way round.
This is false. Many operators offer dual SIM cards; both cards contain the same subscription data, and usually the last one activated is logged on to the network succesfully to receive incoming calls. Both can make outbound calls.
If someone HAS cloned your SIM, and both phones are attached at the same time, the network would register a fault
No, it works, though you will notice only one handset receiving calls. It's not registered as a fault (though it is registered).
A SIM can only be "effectively" cloned if the original was never used afterwards. If both the Original SIM and the Clone was used at the same time, the network will try and continuesly switch between the two cells its registered to, unless both are on the same cell. if both are on the same cell, further issues would happen.
Again, not true.
In fact, if certain algorithms are used (IIRC, COMP-128) it's even possible to reconstruct the SIM's KI and clone it using information eavesdropped over-the-air (be afraid!).
- Maybe, if you visited another country (or performed roaming) there might be some residual temporary numbers assigned to your phone.
Which numbers would those be? The connection between your MSISDN and most-likely (or actual) away-network is always looked up via the home registry; the away-registry doesn't associate any temporary MSISDNs to your SIM, it doesn't need to. And if it did, and someone misdialed such a random number, how would they be supposed to get through to you? Their home registry simply won't accept entries for SIMs from your network.
However, the way the records are kept, you shoudl find that its pretty easy for the phone company to determine what happend. Who made the phone call, what handset was in use, where the call was recieved.
Spoken as some one who's never tried to get a phone company to look up something in their records. Good luck trying that. Yes, it's technically feasible, but that doesn't mean phone companies are organizationally capable of doing this.
Finally I do not know the laws of the US, but here in the UK, the first point of call if you think your phone has been cloned or if your believe that a crime has been committed regarding your phone is the POLICE.
No, first call the phone company to report fraud, so they can put restrictions in place (e.g. no international calls, no premium toll numbers) to prevent ongoing abuse and rising phone bills, and report and investigate at leisure.
In UK, if we recieve am abusive call, calling the phone company will not be any help. They will rightly ask you to contact the police first, and they will work with the police to resolve the matter.
Again, no; "British Telecom has its own unit, which deals with nuisance calls. If you have not already reported it to BT then contact them on 150. They will investigate first and if they can trace the calls, you will then be advised to make a formal police report to your local police station. [police.uk] Cable & Wireless and mobile phone companies require that it be reported to police before they will deal with it. Attend your
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Informative)
There is nothing implicitly wrong with completing 2 phone calls at the same time. And while there may be cases where it makes no sense, there are so many cases where it makes sense that generaly speaking it is easier to allow it than to presume there is a problem. A call appearing on a bill for a persons cell phone may not even involve a CELL call or a cloned SIM card at all. It could be a land line which the telco wrongly associated with the cell customers phone bill. There may be nothing wrong with the CELL network at all, but a mere data entry error in the billing system.
We are first and foremost concerned with insuring that our customers (or any party which even appears to be a customer) are able to completing their phone calls. Failing to complete a good call is considered a much more serious error than erroneously ALLOWING the completion of a fraudulent call. The rule of thumb is.. when in doubt : complete the call. In fact, I would say that while our systems are 99.999% reliable, their ability to stop fraudulent phone calls is NOT 99.999%. Or at least I can say our testing and so forth in that regard has not been enough to make such a claim.
So... does my code care if you complete 65 phone calls at the same time? no. For all I know you have a service which allows you to complete 65 phone calls at the same time. And if such a service doesn't exist right today, for all I know someone will dream it up next week. It is not for me to speculate.
As a hypothetical:
If the same phone line initiated a call from 2 seperate switches simultaneously, there would be no information passed between the 2 switches to detect such an impossible situation. The difficulty of trying to insure such a check was functioning in real time exceeds the benefit.
In fact... even if we could detect such situations in real time, I would be loath to presume that it was in fact wrong. What if those 2 switches are load sharing? What if Switch A, initiated Call #1, and then experienced a problem causing calls to be routed to Switch B? I would need to think of every possible situation to insure I didn't accidentally break functionality that ought to work.
We design telephone systems to work when there are serious failures all over the network. We don't want to be the one responsible to not completing that phone call that results in someone dying or whatever.
You can pretty much assume telephone networks (to the extent that they would BLOCK a phone call which looks funny) are not bullet proof.
If some technician tells you they are, that technician doesn't know what he's talking about.
I would be amazed that a customer support person actually hung up on a customer who wanted to know about the possibility of cloning a SIM card.
Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes... (Score:4, Insightful)
What? What about when you are on the ground and happen to be standing in between 3 different towers, an equal distance from each? Wouldn't that be the same kind of situation you are talking about in an air plane?
Because all the cells need to negotiate with each other to ensure that your phone is only logged in to one cell at a time? And if you're on a plane, not only can your mobile see a lot of cells (meaning that negotiation is expensive), but because you're moving fast, the system has to renegotiate very frequently as you move from cell to cell?
Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes... (Score:4, Interesting)
Do you believe everything the government feeds you?
I know someone who tried this recently. They forgot to turn off their cell, and remembered mid-flight. They looked at the phone, and had no signal. Since it hadn't caused any problems so far, they left it on. The didn't have a signal again until they had almost landed (like the last minute or so of the flight).
If terrorists were in control of an aircraft, would they be letting people call their family? hell no. If you're controlling a situation, you control everything about it. There's no half ass "ok, call mom and tell her you're ok".
Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes... (Score:4, Insightful)
I told you, I worked for LogicaCMG, we provide manufacture Mobile Network equipment (Logica Mobile Networks). If you dont know who LogicaCMG is and the size of its involvement in Telecoms, well back in 2003, 75% of the worlds SMS all went through LogicaCMG Software. So now you know my experience, and expertise, let me continue.
WHen a plane that is so high up crosses a densely populated city with a high cell density A cellphone will attempt to log onto many of those cells at the same time. Both the phone and the cells on the network will see almost equal "signal strengths" (distance between plane and ground is greater than distqance between cells, litttle bit of elementary geometry required here.. sorry I dont have a picture decribing the phemonenom). As such the netowrk does some form of conflict resolution which is communication and processor intensive.
s the plane is flying at a high speed, its possibel the phone is connecting on and off to many cells in a short time (signals are weaker too), this causes a lot of strain on the network, sometimes causing it to go down temporarily as its automatically restarted.
Multiply this by 100 or more phones on a single plane, and you can see how much of a strain this can be on the network.
A network glitch like this looks bad to the operator, as customers on the ground are cut off their calls for a few seconds (there are some SLAs that operators have to publish here in regards to call disconnections)
Our reasearch was actually contracted by Orange, and O2 in 1997 to helpfind ways to improve the ability to deal with mobiles on planes affecting cells on the ground.
We have tested this phenomenon in our test labs many times to try and improve the systems.
Together with better switching algoritms on the cells, and also the use of PICO trancievers located on the plane itself, we believe we have found some solutions for operators.
But it is TRUE that the mobile networks were imforming the FAA and other airline bodies about this problem. Face it, they woudl me most happy for the extra income created when thier phones are used in the air, but currently their systems can break when they are.
Before anyone informs me that cells were being used in one of the 9/11 planes. The plane was flying low over an area with much lower cell density.
Re:Seems Wrong.. Cell phones work in airplanes... (Score:4, Insightful)
It is both. Airline operators prohibit operating radio transmitting equipment on board an airplane in flight (FAA requires that any equipment that is going to be used be tested for safe operation on commercial flights), but even private pilots aren't allowed to use cell phones in the air due to FCC regulations.
Adjacent cell towers coordinate frequencies in use, and do handoffs to the next cell as you move from one to the other. In an airplane, you are "adjacent" to many towers at once, even those that are so far apart that they can't coordinate and hand off. Even though YOUR call may end up working, you're probably disconnecting other calls over a wide area as you step on their frequency (and since you're about 5 miles away from the cell you're actually talking to that's directly below you, your signal is still about 50% as strong over a 5 mile radius around that tower).
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:3, Informative)
it is possible, and indeed within the spec to have two SIMs attached to a phone number. When a call is recieved, both phone are alerted, and whoever "picks up" answers.
Each SIM NUMBER has to be unique. if two physical phones with the same SIM number connects, the system will not be abel to tell them apart, and will fault.
If a SIM is cloned in such a way that two different SIMs with different numbers have the same phone number, that "clone" would have to be created by the p
Re:switching the number won't work (Score:5, Insightful)
To be honest, it looks like his partner probably had another "partner".. who called that line "number witheld", and was just fobbing him off, sayign that his phone may be cloned. That seems the most likely situation.
(the fact the calls were INCOMMING, and the number was unavailable are the biggest clues)
Do Not Put Up With That (Score:5, Informative)
You're a human being. But more importantly, you're a paying customer. Call them up, get the guy's name. Inform him that if he hangs up, you'll contact his supervisor. Then ask him what zip code these calls were made from, they should be able to figure that out. Verify that it's something reasonable.
If they won't believe you and you can convince them you're not making the calls, try calling the number and letting your phone ring. See if anyone picks up.
If that doesn't work, simply demand they change your number for you.
If they refuse to do that, be sure to inform them where you're taking your business.
Personally, I'd be pretty damned pissed if anyone ever hung up on me when I was simply inquiring as to why they were charging me money. In fact, I know right where I'd file [bbb.org] that complaint.
If I had a credit card associated with the account, I'd call my credit card company and dispute the charge. You explain to the credit card company that they hung up on you twice. What the operator will do is put you on hold while they contact T-Mobile. The operator should introduce you to the T-Mobile rep and try to resolve the issue. If T-Mobile has a call from a credit card company, I'm certain they'll be a bit more understanding when they're looking at the possibility of having to chase down a stopped payment.
Re:Do Not Put Up With That (Score:5, Informative)
I filed a claim with the BBB a couple years ago and all I did was fill out paperwork (well, web forms). I was never interviewed by the BBB, never called by the BBB, and they never (to my knowledge) contacted the company I filed the claim against to work with them as my advocate. I have no evidence that they did anything at all.
The hours I spent documenting & compiling everything for the BBB, everything I sent them, may as well have been pitched into a black hole.
Depends on where you live (Score:4, Interesting)
I got a settlement from a car dealer after just a couple of phone calls after contacting my own local BBB branch. Some of them do work like they're supposed to.
Re:Do Not Put Up With That (Score:5, Informative)
- Stats collection, as others have noticed. Anyone can get a report on a company and find out how many complaints (and, more importantly, unresolved complaints) have been filed.
- If the company is a BBB member, then all complaints must get resolved (note that this doesn't mean resolved in the customer's favor), or the company's membership gets dropped. BBB provides arbitration to facilitate this.
That's pretty much it.A selection of things they can't do:
Get a better service provider (Score:2)
Wife and I were having some problems keeping track of phone calls after our son was born (which is understandable...) We use Verizon, and their website when you log in will list all placed and received calls including numbers, locations, durations. We didn't even have to call a service rep.
Re:Do Not Put Up With That (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's some advice: Don't take that shit.
That's the best advice you'll get. You pay them to provide you with mobile phone service and in return they promise to provide that service. The onus is on them; if someone is illegally using your phone number and wracking up hundreds or thousands of dollars in calls you did not make, they have a vested interest in determining if this is true and putting a stop to it. The easiest way for them to do that is freeze yor account and issue you a new phone number. I have T-Mobile and managed to lose my phone in France; I called them immediately and they were able to freeze my account that instant, preventing anyone from making calls and I was able to get a replacement as soon as I got back.
Try calling again -- keep calling until you get someone to listen. Try to cut right to the heart of the matter -- tell them you think someone is making calls using your number. A CSR should be able to pull up your current calling records and verify what you're terlling them easily enough.
As an aside, why is it possible for calls from the same number to be going on simultaneously? Wouldn't there be something to prevent that, unless you were using a three-way calling option?
I'm skeptical - T-Mobile service is great (Score:4, Interesting)
I know you almost never hear a statement like this about any company -- which is why I'm going to come out and say it -- but I've actually been nothing but satisfied with the customer service at T-Mobile. I've had to call numerous times, for various reasons, and the rep on the phone has invariably been extremely courteous.
I think I can count one occasion where the person I spoke to didn't really seem to understand what was going on and I ended the call without getting much satisfaction. I called back later with the same problem, spoke to someone else, and got the problem resolved. All the other times I was escalated to the level of support that could help me with my problem with no fuss, quickly and politely. I've even been handed off for second-level support to RIM for my Blackberry when it was necessary; nobody even gave me the slightest hard time. And they always, always thank me for my business -- sometimes the dumb little things count.
Another time I noticed an instant messaging charge on my bill that seemed out of place (I get unlimited SMS). Instead of getting mad, I just wrote up a quick e-mail on their Web site stating plainly that I thought the charge was erroneous and I'd like it reversed (please). A few days later I got an e-mail back saying, sure enough, they decided it was a mistaken charge, were reversing it, and were giving me 20 free anytime minutes also. No problem.
So I'm extremely skeptical about this whole story. T-Mobile hasn't been winning J.D. Power customer support awards for nothing. For two different reps to actually hang up on somebody tells me that either A.) somebody called up, screaming and yelling irrationally and refusing to take any kind of due process to address the issue; or B.) somebody's making up a story for some reason.
(Of course, it could be possible that the submitter is talking about T-Mobile in Europe, which I can't speak to.)
Re:I'm skeptical - T-Mobile service is great (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm skeptical - T-Mobile service is great (Score:4, Informative)
So... after 5 years with T-Mobile, I am ditching them due to the morons I spoke to. The only other GSM game in town seems to be Cingular. They have mobile email, but it's only MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc.
Tinfoil hat theory (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Do Not Put Up With That (Score:3, Informative)
And at the same time, reme
I've had this problem also.. (Score:5, Informative)
I showed up at a Verizon Wireless sales center, yelling and complaining (trust me, I can throw quite the tantrum,) until a manager finally got in touch with someone to fix the issue.
I got three months of free service for the trouble.. and since I've had perfect phone bills.
Never underestimate the power of being an ass when you're not treated fairly..
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:2)
=)
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:2)
Never overestimate the power of being an ass. There's usually a better way.
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:5, Interesting)
My favorite CSR story happened a long time ago when I had a dial-up account... I didn't pay the bill for three months and they shut off the account. So I called up Earthlink (I think) to pay the bill in full and get the account turned back on. I was unemployed at the time so money was tight. In any case I talked to the tech support guy, being very nice and polite the entire time. For whatever reason he was apparently having a bad day and decided that he was going to take it out on me. I kept my composure, and just rebuffed his attitude towards me by continuing to be nice. As I was getting the billing straightened out, he told me that they had a $40 (I think) reconnect fee. Having been in the dial-up ISP business previously (not with this ISP though,) I was totally confident that waiving the re-connect fee was entirely up to the CSR. Keep in mind, this CSR had had an attitude with me this entire time up to this point. So I asked him "Would you please waive the reconnect fee?" You could hear the devilish joy in his voice as he prepared to smack me down "What is the reason that your reconnect fee should be waived?" He was sooo excited when he asked me that because he knew I didn't have a good reason, I simply didn't pay the bill and he was more than ready to tell me no. So rather than get pissed, like I wanted to (it was like he was taunting me,) I decided to go for it and say the stupidest thing ever. "Because I'm a nice guy." There was a rather long pause as his attitude shifted from an evil glee to astonishment. He said, with an extremely condescending tone, "You want me to waive the reconnect fee because you're a nice guy?" I almost burst out laughing, having suddenly realized the ridiculousness of my request. I paused for half a moment and simply said "Yes." I judged the situation slightly wrong though, turns out this CSR didn't have full discretion over the reconnect fee like I had at my old job. My response wasn't on his script so he couldn't say yes or no - he had to get permission from his supervisor. This was like the greatest revenge ever, considering his treatment towards me. With an irritated, but confident tone he said "I'll have to go talk to my supervisor about this, please hold." and off he went. I sat on my end just reveling in the whole mess, I was ruining this guy day by simply being nice and polite, and the harder he tried to ruin my day the worse his was getting. A couple minutes goes by he gets back on the phone. Totally indignant, he proceeds to tell me "We're going to go ahead and reconnect the account, along with waiving the fee. We are ONLY GOING TO DO THIS, THIS ONCE. WE WILL NEVER WAIVE THE FEE FOR YOU AGAIN!" The volume and authority in his voice went way up in the last bit, he finally got his little opportunity to inflict what pain he could on me. I said "ok, thanks." And that was it.
Had I gotten all pissy and demanded I speak to a supervisor I for sure would've been shutdown down one way or another, by being nice I got to have a lot of fun and get my way.
Sad, but true (Score:4, Interesting)
I've had a couple of experiences where being reasonable and polite got me nowhere with customer service, but when I got frustrated at the end of the conversation (after being told several times "there's nothing we can do") and basically gave them and their manager hell over the problem, it got resolved ("OK sir, we'll send out a replacement right away").
The most frustrating thing about this (to me) is that I don't want to have to be an ass to get a problem fixed. In fact, I go out of my way to do business with companies that fix the problem the first time when I come and politely ask for assistance. I don't recall this being the case in my younger years, but that may be more a result of my memory than an actual decline in customer service.
Re:Sad, but true (Score:3, Insightful)
Problem is, the bad customer service epidemic is now conditioning people to pull the "jerk" card before they really need to.
For example, my company prides itself in customer service, to the extent that we have never not replaced a broken product, even when well outside of our posted warranty period. Nonetheless, we get daily calls where people begin rudely insisting that they're going to get what they w
Re:Sad, but true (Score:3, Insightful)
EVERY phone system has problems like this. (Score:5, Interesting)
Let me tell you something you may not realize -- all of these systems have bugs. Some of them are horrible bugs. Bugs like ringtones getting double-taxed or calls getting billed when you ring a number but don't get an answer with absolutely no way to tell the difference between a legit call and a call that didn't answer.
Some of these bugs are due to flaws within the billing system. Some are bugs in the switch data (the absolute worst kind because there's no good way to filter the data when good and bad records are all marked up the same). Some are tables screw ups that lead to entire bills getting mangled. Some of these bugs get caught by the bill checking department and others may go for months without being noticed until a customer complains.
"Number unavailable" calls are most likely from records that were sent to the billing system with no other party number populated (or populated with some default "we don't know what this is" value). Our system simply replaces the other number with your own number and keeps going. Other providers probably cover for it in some other way as well.
What you have may in fact be legit phone calls that had mangled or incomplete switch records or records from the inter-carrier clearinghouse. Alternately, you may have junk data that you don't deserve to be billed for. It's all up how your company handles such complaints on what to do with about it. I know that my company frequently requests us to go find how many customers were affected and by how much so that we can either strip records from the bills and rerun them or go back and credit the customers proactively. We always try to err on the side of underbilling rather than overbilling customers because it's better to lose some money up front and give customers a pleasant surprise rather than after a nasty lawsuit with all the bad publicity.
However, if T-Mobile hangs up on you, that just isn't right. Call them up and simply say that you'd like to dispute the charges and have their billing team investigate where the records came from. That'll probably lead to a bug report being filed somewhere in their bureaucracy and a fix for you and others having the same problem. If they give you crap, then switch providers. It's not like there aren't multiple GSM service providers in the US now.
While we're throwing labels around (Score:3, Insightful)
You're a self-righteous tosser. He's not talking about 'getting what he wants', he's talking about not being conned out of his money by Verizon. And what does "hurting people" have to do with anything, apart from making him sound worse in comparison to you?
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Besides, by working at a place where you deal with the public, you basically agree to be yelled at.
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh. Last time I walked into a sprint store to drop my service and take care of some weird billing, I just walked up to a sales rep and asked to speak with a manager about account issues I was having. They walked me over to the manager, and I got things taken care of. All without making myself look like a total jackass! It's amazing what being a decent person gets you every once in a while.
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:2)
In some cases, as long as the contract as expired, it's just easier to quit the service. In my case, I've been with T-Mobile and never had a real problem. Soon, I will have to cancel as they don't provide service in my new area and my only choice is Cingular. So in a sense, Cingular has the monopoly in my new area.
Re:I've had this problem also.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why make things difficult? (Score:5, Informative)
Just dispute those calls with T-Mobile and let them figure it out.
If your bill was over by $40 go back and tell them you didn't receive this call, you didn't receive that call, didn't make that call, etc.
They have the data to know when and where the calls were received based on the cell towers that the phone was received from.
Keep escalating the issue dude.
Call back and immediately ask to speak with a supervisor.
Get names.
Record the dates and time you called and who you spoke with.
Keep escalating up the chain of command if you have to.
If that doesn't work, file a formal complaint with the FCC and your State's Public Service Commission. That'll definitely get their attention.
Good luck!
The AOL thing (Score:2)
Re:Why make things difficult? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, aren't bills with multiple numbers broken down by call to/from each phone? Mine is, I believe.
Re:Why make things difficult? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent advice. I'd like to add that this one bit of advice is the most powerful thing you can do. Every time you talk to customer service, the very first thing you do is get the name of the person you're talking to. The whole name, first and last. Make sure you understand it. If they mumble, ask them to repeat it until you understand it. It doesn't hurt to ask them to confirm the spelling if you have any doubt about it. I usually write it down while I'm talking, if it is convenient.
Suggestions (Score:2)
2. I don't understand why they *would* "hang up on you", since you seem to have fairly reasonable records that you're receiving calls you didn't receive, and indeed, overlapping onto calls that you've made. Why would they think you're running a scam when you're asking questions about calls you didn't place on your bill?
3. Are you SURE your partner isn't really receiving these calls? I.e., have you been with him at known times
Re:Suggestions (Score:3, Informative)
I didn't get this part of the story. On my "Family Plan" bill from Verizon there are completely separate sections for each phone showing the calls made to and from that particular phone. I would assume that T-mobile indicates which phone the calls are being made to or from on its bill as well. No need to question the partner if the calls are being charged to
Get in T-Mobile's Face (Score:4, Informative)
And, once you get this issue resolved, leave T-Mobile.
Re:Get in T-Mobile's Face (Score:2)
Re:Get in T-Mobile's Face (Score:2)
The question is... (Score:5, Insightful)
You ask the question, "Has my cell number been cloned?" I ask the more pressing question... "Has your brain turned to mush?" DUH, if you're getting calls that you're not getting, then there's a problem.
You say "Both representatives hung up on me, thinking I was trying to con them or something." I say, you need to adjust your message to give them the facts -- customer support reps are only human. If you ramble on with your life story, or rant and rave, or interject useless details, then you might get hung up on. But T-Mobile gave me good service when I had them (I only dropped them because they didn't have good service in the middle of nowhere, where I live). If you call and say "Here are the calls that I neither made nor received. Please remove them from my bill and block me from ever recieving calls from the associated numbers." I can't imagine they'd refuse.
There's also the distinct possibility that the owner of the second line isn't being straight with you. I'm reminded of a poem I read on the bus [dart.org]:
By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing,
And he vows his passion is
Infinite, undying -
Lady, make a note of this:
One of you is lying.
-Dorothy Parker, Unfortunate Coincidence
Re:The question is... (Score:2)
walk in (Score:2)
Overlap (Score:5, Informative)
The only theoretical way I am aware of to clone a GSM phone is to copy the SIM or have a SIM with the same subscriber number.
A simple fix would be to get a new SIM card. You can get your existing number transferred over to the new card. If its a card clone, then a new card will solve the problem.
Dunno why the customer service kept hanging up on you (was it really a hangup or a dropped call?), considering they supposedly have the best customer service in the business.
or.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(Just saying. It happens all the time.)
Contest the Calls (Score:2)
I suggest you call them and tell them that you did not make the calls in question (contest the calls). It's not your job to figure out what is going on, only to point out that a problem exists. Your mobile provider probably has some internal mechanism designed to investigate and resolve these matters (and the poor saps
Okay.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Next, either go to a B&M location and bitch to someone in person, have bills in hand, or send a letter/e-mail to customer service. The letter and/or e-mail are ignorable, but at least someone should attempt to read it. IF you actually show up at a location you are pretty much non-ignorable. Be sure to express anger, but do not do anything too stupid. IF worse comes to worse, threaten legal action against the location, the employees and T-mobile (always casts wide nets, threatening individuals works because they don't want to lose their money...loyalty to their business is probably minimal.
So make sure to verify that neither you nor your partner received the calls...then go make a stink in person.
Call Waiting (Score:3, Informative)
If you've got T-Mobile, the bill should break down WHICH phone is receiving the call (either yours or your partners). If it's happening on your partner's bill, I would suggest it's more likely that your partner is lying to you than the phone was cloned (just statistically speaking -- nothing against your partner).
Another possibility is that the entry on your bill is "bogus". The result of a computer glitch and you'll need T-Mobiles help to resolve the problem.
Re:Call Waiting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Call Waiting (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Call Waiting (Score:2)
So you can see why we are all waiting with baited breath for those wonderful SMS spam messages. If it's anything like my spamtrap email address, I'd owe a couple of hundred dollars a day after my limit get's passed.
The Problem is.... (Score:2, Informative)
He's cheating on you (Score:5, Funny)
It sounds like your boyfriend is cheating on you and is telling his new boyfriend to use number blocking (*67). Then when you ask him about it, he denies everything.
Sounds to me that it's more likely a billing issue (Score:2)
If neither of these things happen, than it's pretty unlikely that somebody is using your numbe
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
You get charged for receiving calls? (Score:5, Interesting)
My phone bill would be hundreds of pounds a month - rather than the £15-£20 it normally is - if this happened in the UK. Over here, we get charged for making calls from our mobiles (cell phones), but the person calling my mobile is the one who gets charged for ringing me - I don't get charged for that unless I'm in a different country.
How come American consumers haven't risen up and complained about this? It seems a bit of a rip off to me.
--
silas
Re:You get charged for receiving calls? (Score:2)
Bob
Re:You get charged for receiving calls? (Score:3, Informative)
In fact, some people already had the problem of sudden paid text messages without knowingly subscribing to such a service, and without information on how to unsubscribe.
The providers, who very well know how to invoice these services, suddenly hide behind bullshit "we do not know" and "we cannot tell" arguments when you try
Depends on the provider (Score:2)
Reasons: how american cell plans work (Score:3, Informative)
So, put these things together and for
Re:You get charged for receiving calls? - Cheaper! (Score:4, Insightful)
In the UK (and most other countries), the landline-to-mobile rate is fixed at a high price. The mobile companies have no strong incentive to lower their termination fees, because they're not charging "their" customers - it's the other schmucks (landline customers) who get the shaft (customers they want to steal away from landline!). Of course there could be some limited competition on the landline side to get the "lowest" mobile termination fees, but in the end the landline carriers still have to negotiate that with the mobile provider. How much would 1000 minutes cost from landline to mobile in the UK? £36.10 - £215.40, depending on the carrier and time-of-day? [bt.com]
In the North American system, the entire minute bucket of incoming and outgoing minutes is negotiated between the mobile provider and their direct customer. Therefore, there is significant competition between carriers to provide the lowest total price. In other words, when you select a carrier here, you are negotiating the price on both sides. Over there, you are only negotiating the outgoing side of the equation (for the most part). How much would 1000 minutes (either direction) cost in the US? $40 (or free on nights/weekends)? [t-mobile.com]
In the future, it seems like unlimited wireless is a distinct possibility (it already exists in my market!). In North America, that means that there will be no mobile-related charges whatsoever for incoming or outgoing. Do you think that foreign carriers will let go of mobile termination fees even if/when outgoing calls become free (unlimited)? In my case, I could pay $70/month and nobody would pay any per-minute fees to or from my phone!
Re:You get charged for receiving calls? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why do you have to pay extra for calling someone on their mobile phone instead of on their land line? Seems a bit of a rip off to me.
Re:You get charged for receiving calls? (Score:3, Insightful)
you are the person who decided the matter was important enough not to wait until the person was back in touch with a landline, the callee on the other hand has little choice but to pick up if its someone they even vaugely recognise (or no caller id). so you should bear the cost of using mobile communication.
Fair Credit Billing Act (Score:3, Interesting)
If they do not comply, file a formal complaint with the FTC and your state AG office.
t-mobile can't hang up (Score:2, Informative)
Similar problem = months in hell (Score:5, Interesting)
The first month the problem showed up I thought it would be a quick fix -- obviously no rational human being could think that I was studiously duplicating every single one of my hundreds of calls exactly three hours apart.
Silly me.
I went through eight months of hell trying to get an AT&T representative to acknowledge there was a problem. I must have made at least 100 calls, sent numerous faxes and letters, and spoken to at least 20 different "supervisors" -- they kept "disappearing," forcing me to start telling the story all over again each time I called.
To a man/woman, they all kept insisting that if the calls appeared on my bill, I had to have made them (since we all know computerized billing systems never have bugs). Until the very end I never got a single one of them to admit that there just MIGHT be a problem if every single one of my hundreds of calls appeared precisely twice, 3 hours apart, on each bill. No, I simply had to have made those calls, there was no other explanation.
Naturally were flatly unwilling to refund the overage charges which, as I mentioned, reached almost $1000 by the third bill. (I didn't cancel the service because I was dependent on it - it was my only phone line, there was no number portability back then, no other service offered "free" roaming/LD which I needed as a New Yorker stuck in California). They did agree to let me pay only the non-disputed charge until the dispute process was over, but soon started sending me dunning letters anyway.
The problem stopped happening after the third month, but I spent most of the rest of the year trying to get them to reverse the excess charges. It was hell, no other word for it. It wasn't the prospect of having to pay a thousand dollars that scared and angered me, it was the simple fact that a large and respected (!) company like AT&T obviously had a policy for its customer support people that went "no matter how obvious it is that the customer is right, you must insist that he is wrong." I don't see how any rational person could fail to recognize that what happened was a massive computer billing error, but as I mentioned before, I never got *anyone* to admit it. By the end, my conversations with them were so psychologically draining that I was starting to wonder if it really could be my mistake somehow.
The very end of the saga -- eight months later - was that I finally managed to talk to a manager who agreed there was a problem, told me that many others had experienced it, and canceled all the excess charges, just like that. So, basically, they'd known all along that there was a problem. and just kept stonewalling in the hopes that I'd break down and pay them.
That experience marked the end of my innocence about big, respectable business. In a very real sense, I "grew up" over those 8 months.
Re:Similar problem = Cingular (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe I was a little harsh: "You're an idiot. I'm cancelling my account not because of Cingular's service or this charge, but because you ma'am, are an idiot." The cancellation rep tried to convince me to stay and generously offered to cut the charges in half... "I shouldn't have to negotiate how much I pay you for your mistake. How about you refund the full amount and then pay me $100 in consulting fees for the hour I've spent identifying bugs in your system?" Then came the offer of a full refund, and I still cancelled.
Re:Similar problem = Cingular (Score:3, Informative)
"Yeah, that's why there's a multi-billion dollar a year industry to repair them."
Speak to tech support (Score:2, Interesting)
Phone Logs? (Score:2)
I had issues with T-Mobile... (Score:3, Interesting)
I got resolution by:
a) Writing a letter to the president of customer service (Sorry, I don't seem to have the name and address on this computer.)
b) Complaining to the BBB
They wound up crediting my account with the $100 rebate twice, once for each method of complaint. I didn't stop them, because I figured it was just compensation for the absurd amount of time it took to get it all sorted.
I got better efforts out of customer service by walking into a local T-Mobile store, where I'd purchased the phone, and asking the sales representatives to assist me with my issue, but those efforts got no results.
Be less "helpful" (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that you're trying to supply a conclusive diagnosis to the T-mobile rep when you actually ahve no freakin' idea why those charges are appearing. Quit trying to offer them an explanation up front. That sounds like a con. Just give them the symptoms-- i.e. calls/charges on the bill that aren't yours-- and let them figure out what's happening.
To sum up (Score:3, Informative)
T-Mobile have cocked up - they can easily check the calls and get more information about them to confirm if this is the case.
Your partner is lying/mistaken about receiving calls. If I had a suspicious mind, I'd just 'borrow' his phone and check the call log on the handset - see if one of the mysterious calls appears there.
I Had a Similar Problem (Score:3, Interesting)
I had a similar problem involving T-Mobile "T-Zones". While idle, my phone
was apparently contacting T-Zones. In fact, once in a while I'd 'catch' it
making an (autonomous) one minute T-Zones connection (because the phone
would light up).
Since I wasn't a T-Zones subscriber, T-Mobile billed me for each and every
connection, even though the connections were happening 'automatically'.
For the first few months I didn't notice it because I was on the road and
running up massive phone bills anyway, but by the time I realized what was
going on, I was $5,000 in the hole. It took months of phone calls to customer
service for them to even acknowlege that there was a problem. I even made a
short video of my phone 'turning itself on and connecting to T-Zones'.
I will say, that T-Mobile ended up being great, and clearing my bill of
all the charges, but only after 50 or so calls to CS.
Total nightmare.
Re:My "partner"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Come out of the closet, self hating fag (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:My "partner"? (Score:4, Funny)
I wonder what that could mean... (not that there's anything really wrong with it).
Re:Partner? (Score:2)
Re:Partner? (Score:3, Insightful)
We can not bother because it's irrelevant to the question. Ask Slashdot isn't really a forum on sexual choices.