In June, someone has fraudulently taken 3 mobile phone contracts in my husband’s name at the EE store in Woking.
This only came to light when he received his July bill and it was referred to EE’s fraud team.
The fraud team have basically said that fraud hasn’t taken place and he taken the phone contracts out himself because a one time pin was sent to his phone to enable the employee to process the contracts.
Just to give you some context, these contracts were taken out at 5pm in Woking where my husband supposedly was at that time! (we live over 200 miles away from Woking) But I have looked through my camera roll and we went out for dinner in Manchester at about 7pm on that day!
I went into a local EE store and asked them what their procedure was if someone came in to purchase a contract. They advised protocol was to request ID but they would normally just accept the one time pin. I explained the situation we were in, and the employee advised that this was a known scam by someone who used to work for EE.
At the time, I asked for CCTV of the store which they wouldn’t provide. I asked if any ID was requested from the individual who was posing as my husband, they confirmed nothing was requested as the one time pin was sufficient to prove who he was as the physical phone would have to have been at the store and the employee would’ve needed to see the one time pin on his actual phone. They also didn’t take any up front cost on 3 iphone 14 pro max’s which I found very bizarre! As the bank details would’ve helped us track down who it actually was.
We went back and forth for a while, until they issued the deadlock letter and sent us to the communications ombudsman.
The ombudsman came back to say that they couldn’t look into this any further as they don’t assess whether fraud as taken place. As such, we were directed to the police and action fraud.
I contacted Surrey police, who advised as 28 days had passed since the incident, EE would most likely not provide CCTV for the store and whilst they accept this is a case of fraud, without a suspect they wouldn’t be able to look into this any further but would report the phones stolen. The lady was very helpful and did ring the Woking EE store and they advised the employee who actually sold these contracts no longer works for EE. The police provided me with a CRN and advised me to pass this to EE who should hopefully shut the accounts down.
I called EE and they said regardless of what the police had said, they don’t believe fraud has taken place and they wouldn’t be taking any further action.
In the meantime, we continued to pay the direct debit for over £300 every month as we were in the middle of buying our first home and didn’t want to affect his credit rating. We moved into our house in October and cancelled the direct debit immediately.
EE cut his phone line off last week, so I called them to see if they were willing to come to an agreement or he would be leaving EE. They have now asked for £6,000 to close the whole account down!
I have spoken to action fraud who have logged this and have passed it to the NFIB. They didn’t think NFIB would be able to do anything, and the likelihood would be that we would have to take this to court.
We have received a letter today from the debt collectors but just wanted to know if anything similar has happened to anyone or if they know of how a OTP can be sent to a different phone posing to be the one linked to the account.
This has really affected us a family, both financially and mentally. My husband already suffers from poor mental health and this has sent him in a downward spiral.
I watched the post office scandal last night and I couldnt help but think we are victims of a much bigger scam and EE are turning a blind eye to this.
any help would be greatly appreciated.
