Phone Number Abuse Report

You’ve Been Slammed!

Last week I picked up the landline and punched in a number. I needed to verify my identity with a certain government agency.

No dial tone.

I turned the phone off and on again. No dial tone on the kitchen line or the basement line. I plugged in a hard-wired phone. Nothing.

When I called my service provider on a mobile, I was told that eight days earlier a request had been made to discontinue landline service. My PIN had been changed. I spent the next two hours speaking to four different agents in descending order of helpfulness.

The first agent said my number had been re-routed to the same provider’s wireless service and given to another user. She submitted an order to retrieve the number and re-establish service, saying it would be activated in two days.

“My landline number’s being used by another person on a mobile? Sounds like fraud,” I said.

“I can connect you with the fraud department. You can also submit a Slam complaint with the FCC, since your provider was switched without your authorization.”

“As in slam the phone on someone? That’s pretty funny.”

She didn’t seem humored. “It’s a law from the Eighties,” she said, then sent me to the fraud department.

The Fraud Department

I might have had better luck if she’d sent me to the empathy department. The fraud department had no compassion and didn’t see their role as I did.

I saw their role as informing the customer about how the fraudulent activity had occurred. How an unauthorized user had changed a PIN. How they’d discontinued another user’s service, and why I wasn’t notified by phone or email at any point in the process?

Instead of providing these insights, the role of the fraud department was limited to collecting my sad story, typing it up for nobody to read, and asking was there anything else they could do for me?

Tell me the name of the individual currently assigned to my former landline. Can’t. Tell me what numbers they’ve dialed in the last two weeks. Can’t. Tell me anything at all about how I can follow up and protect myself. Can’t. Can’t Can’t.

“You do realize that right now, in real time, an unauthorized user is using my number in a fraudulent way. I’ve just handed you a case of ongoing fraud using your service. What action are you going to take?”

“We realize it. In fact, they appear to have several numbers assigned to them.”

“But you can’t tell me who it is or how they’re using it.” Because, it turns out, the role of the fraud department has nothing to do with protecting the customer from fraud. So, I asked to speak to customer service.

Customer Service

Customer service was even less helpful than the fraud people. They also typed up my service disruption story, but offered no insight into how it had occurred, who had done it, or how my number was being used. They had no explanation for my changed PIN.

“That should never happen,” they said.

“I know,” I said.

“Is there anything else I can do for you today?”

“I don’t know that you’ve done anything for me today. It’s been two hours and I have to file a Slam complaint with the FCC.”

“Good idea,” said customer service.

Federal Communications Commission

I did submit a Slam complaint which generated an automated reply that the FCC had received my Slam complaint. More impressively, it generated a follow-up call from my service provider the very next day.

More impressive still, the caller identified herself as calling from some executive’s office, expressed remorse for my trouble, and promised to expedite my landline service.

The next day, we still had no service. The next day, I called my provider and told an agent the story I had told at the beginning of the week. The agent told me they’d put in a request for the number to be retrieved and restored to my landline. “It could take 72 hours,” he said.

The next day, my landline rang. It was my service provider. They wanted to know if my service had been restored. “Well, I guess so,” I said.

The next caller, and the caller after that, were spam calls.

It’s entirely possible I brought this scenario on myself. It’s entirely possible my deplorable interaction with telephone robots on my landline are what led to the cutting of my service. I guess I’ll never know.

What I do know is either there’s a bad actor out there who intentionally got use of my number and now no longer does, and it serves them right. Or some poor dupe was given my number in error and now has to go about changing all their account references to the same.

If you enjoyed this post and would like to read more like it, try Infinite Agents, Zero Answers.

And please tell me: What tale of woe would you like to share dealing with customer service, the fraud department, or other service providers over the telephone? Leave it in the comments!