Abacist
LIFE MEMBER
I have been a long term customer of Eurobell which was taken over by Telewest then became Virgin Media. They dug the streets to deploy optical fibre early on and provide a Broadband, TV and Telephone service to personal and business customers. More recently I have had more than my fair share of aggro with their email service with them cutting me off because there has been suspicious traffic on the account. Each time I have to spend a morning phoning, waiting and getting through to the fraud department to reset my password etc. Its pretty much become a monthly inconvenience.
Today an Asian woman 'phoned from Virgin Media to say that they need to sort out my internet/broadband/router problem which was spewing out loads of crap and they needed to sort it out. I naturally asked how could I satisfy myself that it was really Virgin Media? She said her colleague would deal with that in a moment. She passed me over to someone else who got me to load something that demonstrated over 800 faults.
At his point he asked what other devices used our internet connection and he said that they should be turned off and not used to avoid corruption during the repair process apart from my iPhone and he asked me to download an App from the App Store. I had to go into this which generated a number which he asked for then told me to exit.
They would now download the software to my Mac to resolve the issue. I did what I was told. The only website they asked me to access was Virgin Media and were able to confirm my Virgin Media account number, Area code and monthly direct debit.
After a few moments he decided that the router needed to be replaced and said he had booked for one to be fitted quoting and checking with me a convenient date & time.
He then advised that I would be due compensation for their poor service and the router faults. When he asked me to start typing the bank name into the browser I smelt the rate and hung up. I deleted the mobile phone App and the downloaded software on the MAC. He kept 'phoning me back to either jam the phone or to try to persuade me to continue but I ignored it and he gave up.
All my bank accounts are secure and I 'phoned the fraud department of two to report the matter and one is cancelling our current internet banking set up and App and will replace once I have presented ID at a branch. The other is replacing our debit cards.
It makes me wonder how they knew I was a Virgin customer or was it an inside job? Of course now that the dust and panic have settled I see that the software they were using was so that they could see my computer screen to see me type in the bank details which of course I refused to do and cut them off. They did the same with the iPhone so that they could see any bank ikons of Apps on my phone and they picked on two which happened not to be personal accounts so that made me think twice as well. The instruction not to use other iPhones or iPads was to prevent us phoning or reporting to bank apps the fraud attempt. I told them that if they were genuine then they could refund me to the account that they take my direct debit from.
Please be careful out there. I regard myself as reasonably switched on and astute financially but all the previous aggro with VM emails & resetting passwords made it seem so normal that they were 'phoning to resolve an issue!
I have also reported the detailed methodology to Action Fraud in the hope that it helps Police Intelligence.
Today an Asian woman 'phoned from Virgin Media to say that they need to sort out my internet/broadband/router problem which was spewing out loads of crap and they needed to sort it out. I naturally asked how could I satisfy myself that it was really Virgin Media? She said her colleague would deal with that in a moment. She passed me over to someone else who got me to load something that demonstrated over 800 faults.
At his point he asked what other devices used our internet connection and he said that they should be turned off and not used to avoid corruption during the repair process apart from my iPhone and he asked me to download an App from the App Store. I had to go into this which generated a number which he asked for then told me to exit.
They would now download the software to my Mac to resolve the issue. I did what I was told. The only website they asked me to access was Virgin Media and were able to confirm my Virgin Media account number, Area code and monthly direct debit.
After a few moments he decided that the router needed to be replaced and said he had booked for one to be fitted quoting and checking with me a convenient date & time.
He then advised that I would be due compensation for their poor service and the router faults. When he asked me to start typing the bank name into the browser I smelt the rate and hung up. I deleted the mobile phone App and the downloaded software on the MAC. He kept 'phoning me back to either jam the phone or to try to persuade me to continue but I ignored it and he gave up.
All my bank accounts are secure and I 'phoned the fraud department of two to report the matter and one is cancelling our current internet banking set up and App and will replace once I have presented ID at a branch. The other is replacing our debit cards.
It makes me wonder how they knew I was a Virgin customer or was it an inside job? Of course now that the dust and panic have settled I see that the software they were using was so that they could see my computer screen to see me type in the bank details which of course I refused to do and cut them off. They did the same with the iPhone so that they could see any bank ikons of Apps on my phone and they picked on two which happened not to be personal accounts so that made me think twice as well. The instruction not to use other iPhones or iPads was to prevent us phoning or reporting to bank apps the fraud attempt. I told them that if they were genuine then they could refund me to the account that they take my direct debit from.
Please be careful out there. I regard myself as reasonably switched on and astute financially but all the previous aggro with VM emails & resetting passwords made it seem so normal that they were 'phoning to resolve an issue!
I have also reported the detailed methodology to Action Fraud in the hope that it helps Police Intelligence.