Fraudulent Third Party Charges Made Through my Phone Bill After Phone Was Stolen

[Anto]

This is a copy of a complaint I sent via a complain form. A similar email was sent to your CEO, Robert Finnegan. I will start using social media as early as tomorrow. 

I'm making a complaint as, after numerous calls to your escalation team which has led to a resolution not to be charged from fraudulent third party charges of £148.27 made on my phone after it was stolen, I've just received the bill with the third party charges in question. The escalation team had assured me these charges would not appear on my bill.

My iPhone 13 was stolen on 14 August and I went to ask for a replacement card to a Three Mobile Store which I'm using on an Android phone at the moment. I immediately saw text messages with the third party charges. I complained and escalated the complaint to the escalation team who assured me that I was not going to be charged for these charges.

I received two further third party charges on 28 August and your customer service team had to change my number. They guaranteed me that I was not going to be charged for these last two charges.

I would like to stress that you should not allow third party charges on my bill unless I gave consent which I haven't. Furthermore, third party charges on a phone bill are the most unsecured type of transactions and you should not allow them under any circumstance, particularly if you do not take responsibility when the transactions are fraudulent. No customers have interest in allowing third party charges as they can pay via credit cards where transactions are insured. The only reasons you allow third party charges on your phone bills is, therefore, for the economic interest of your business.

I will give you 48 hours to resolve this matter after  which time I will make a complaint to the Ombudsman, contact the press and television and send them a copy of the email I've sent to your CEO, Robert Finnegan, and I will leave Three Mobile for another provider.

In the meantime, I have cancelled my direct debit with Three Mobile and I'll pay the bill only when this is rectified. 

[jiggy]

Hey any update with this? I’m in the exact same situation. 

[JonathanB]

Hi @jiggy,

I'm really sorry to hear this, was your phone stolen also, and you've received info about premium charges? Please let me know a little bit more about what's happened, and I'll do my best to get you in touch with some more support with this.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[ClarkePJ]

Hi Jonathan. I am in the exact same situation and desperately need assistance and advice. I will summarize my situation for you below but please advise as soon as possible. I am being defrauded literally while I type this message which is highly distressing.

I've been a Three Customer for 7+ years. On 30 October 2024 I was mugged and my phone stolen in central London- a traumatic experience. The theft took place at 23:00 at night. In the 7-hour window between that theft and when Three's Customer service opened at 08:00 the next morning (to allow me to cancel my Sim Card) the criminal has somehow hacked your Three Pay system linked to my account (despite me never having enabled Three Pay at all). Therefore for my November bill they made unauthorised charges against my phone number using Three Pay and ran up a bill of over £160, which I was apparently liable for. 

I have tried every possible avenue to address this clear case of fraud with your complaints team and I'm sorry to say that they have not been able to help. I have had at least five different Customer Service members email requesting the same basic information from me while promising an investigation that will take 21 days. I have complied with every data request but unfortunately that 21 days has come and gone and there has still been no resolution. I even paid the extortionately high and unjust November bill as a show of good faith in the hope that Three would look into this as a matter of priority and reimburse me extremely quickly.

To my dismay, I have just received my bill for December which is again extortionately high at over £150. Again, to my dismay, when I look into the details of the bill, it is clear that the same criminal is hacking the Three Pay system to buy the same services using Google Play and I can apparently do nothing at all about this.

I know this is an issue you are aware of as I have seen several message board threads of other Three customers that have been through the exact same thing and they have noted how you as CEO have personally intervened to resolve the situation.

Even if Three eventually decides to reimburse me for the obviously fraudulent charges, I am still very concerned that, despite cancelling my sim card and ordering a new one, here we are in December and the criminal has apparently still been able to make fraudulent charges on my account throughout November.  This is a clear breach of Three's security which obviously threatens my own digital security.

I'm sure you can understand by now that I'm simply haemorrhaging money to a criminal (as if being assaulted was not traumatic enough) and that I am apparently powerless to do anything about it. I simply cannot wait for another promise of an investigation to conclude as your Three Pay system linked to my phone number is clearly compromised. I looked again this morning and can see nearly £30 of unauthorised charges were made on the 11 Decrmber -  that will be added to my next bill as well. 

I simply see no choice but to terminate my contract with Three. Incredibly, because I signed a new Pay Montly contract with Three in September - I would essentially be liable for terminating my contract early and need to pay Three to get out of a situation that they have been unable to fix - all to stop losing money to a criminal. 

I'm sure you can see how unfair this is. I therefore implore you to intervene on my behalf and help me resolve the issue. I'm now losing money daily which is highly distressing. 

You can reach me here or by calling me on my Three number 

Please advise as soon as possible, even just to acknowledge my email. I simply can't keep losing money like this as a victim of fraud.

[CristinaLuna002]

Hi Clarker,

I have exactly the same experience in central London on the same date as you, the 30th of November. I cancelled my SIM the following date in the store and they assured me that all was deactivated and that they would be unable to get to my information. 
However I have already received 2 bills via three with Apple Play charges (via an app called Poppo live which I never heard of). The charges are over 300 pounds. 

I raised the scam to Three SEVERAL TIMES. Spoke to many different operators and the Complaint team on many occasions. It was useless. They only said to claim it via Google. I put two claims to Google with the correlation ID and the Crime number. Still useless. They closed the complaint. 

I spoke several time to three. All operators said different information, there was not a clear narrative and it was very time consuming and exhausting. The last operator from the complaint department said that even if i set the credit limit to zero, they can't ensure that the charges won't continue to come through in the next months...

At this point I am not sure what else to do. It feels completely unsafe and of course I will be terminating my contract with Three as this absolutely ridiculous and I it is Three the one that is stealing my money by not establishing measurements as well as not taking responsability for the fraud (which they are allowing)

I am just unsure whether if I go to a different phone provider, I will also need to change number for the charges to stop. Does anyone know please? This is my main priority now and will need to terminate the contract asap, but need to know whether to change number which will be way more tedious or keep the one I currently have...

Could anyone advise?

[JonathanB]

Hi @ClarkePJ,

I'm really sorry to hear about your experiences, firstly of your phone being stolen, but worse that you've incurred ongoing charges as a result. I hope that we're able to help resolve this swiftly for you. It's my understanding that your complaint is being addressed by the appropriate department, and that you're receiving ongoing updates from them?

Thanks,
Jonathan

[CristinaLuna002]

Also Jonathan, you could do something about it instead of replying to comments with information that has already been discussed in the thread. You are the representation of Three here and honestly you are not adding anything of value to the conversation.
As you can tell there are many of us in the same situation, and three are not putting any security measures or investigating it further. This is very nerve raking and time consuming for all the customers going through it.

You are the "community mediator", are you passing this information to your team? what has been done to stop this scam and increase security measure since you are aware of this?