To Whom It May Concern,
My name is Donald, and I am writing this letter to complain to you about the internal fraud incidents identified on my Pay As You Go Number and the unresponsive ID Fraud handling service provided by your firm. The below incidents constitute an essential part of a breach of the user terms and conditions, and the complaints code of practice, also note that knowingly Internal Fraud Committed by Employees is a criminal offence under the Fraud Act 2006, punishable by up to 10 years’ imprisonment and/or a fine. I must emphasize this is the second time I am suffering from Account Takeover fraud with this number in these 2 years and hence I have requested an additional layer of control for setting 2-layer of password before any porting activity. Unfortunately, one it’s EE Agent employees committed the fraudulent breaches and apparently your staff knew, or could reasonably be expected to have known that my EE Pay As You Go Number has a secondary market value and intentionally bypassed the two layers of password control I requested back in 2 years ago. To date the official investigation feedback has not been received and the promised remediation actions have not been fulfilled. I hereby request to please (i) provide an official feedback in written alongside with the root cause of the incidents; (ii) deactivate the criminal’s SIM card, (iii) reverse the port back to my existing SIM and (iv) provide me with a feasible risk mitigation measure from avoiding this from happen again, within next 5 days from the date of this letter. Otherwise, I will have no option but to raise an official complaint to Ofcom and Financial Conduct Authority, and file a lawsuit against your firm.
I would like to express my strong dissatisfaction on having wasted almost a month waiting for EE ID Fraud Team, or any EE representative, who were all reluctant to provide me with an official feedback (as agreed with them verbally and repeatedly) on Complaint against EE Fraudulent Activities. Further details on previous communication between your Team and myself in August 2021 are stated as below for your handling.
On 1 Aug 2021 morning, I found that my EE Pay As You Go Number signal was lost, given the previous EE Internal Account Takeover Fraud / Account Hijack activity, I believe there's been fraudulent activity happened again on my EE number and hence I have reported the incident immediately to EE Pay As You Go Customer Service Team Duty Manager, immediately. I was told it might be another fraudulent activity and Thomas promised to escalate the case to the EE ID Fraud team for further investigation, and full reply and the signal will be given within the next 3 working days by 4 Aug 2021 and a written confirmation will be provided on the same day by Thomas.
Unfortunately, no reply was given on 1 Aug 2021 and I have kept contacting EE Pay As You Go Customer Services Team for around 7 times in total, but no feedback was received after exactly a month. Given EE admission of it’s EE Agent employees committed to the fraudulent breaches and apparently your staff knew, or could reasonable to expected to have known that my EE Pay As You Go Number has a secondary market value and intentionally bypassed the two layers passwords control I have requested back in 2 years ago, was a serious EE internal policy breach and committed a criminal offence. For details, please find the communication flow below:
1 AUG 2021
Given the signal was lost and I believe someone has made a SIM swap without my consent once again, I have contacted EE Pay As You Go Customer Service Team and spoke directly with the Duty Manager, and request to deactivate the criminal’s SIM card and reverse the port back to my existing SIM card.
As confirmed by EE, it was confirmed that there’s been fraudulent activity identified on my EE account and this was generally known as an internal / external Account Takeover Fraud given my number was ported to another SIM card without my consent. They have given a verbal promise that the ID Fraud team will provide me with an official reply and reverse the port within the next 72 hours, which is 4 AUG 2021 EOD. Also, they promised to provide me with a written confirmation on our conversation by the 1 AUG 2021 EOD.
2 AUG & 4 AUG 2021
I have contacted EE Pay As You GO Customer Service Team on 2 AUG and 4 AUG 2021 respectively and I was informed by EE Customer Service Team colleagues that the investigation is still under process and the ID Fraud team and Customer Service Team will provide me an official reply by 4 AUG 2021 EOD.
9 AUG – 15 AUG 2021
I have contacted EE customer service Team once again in the second week of August, and my call was escalated to the Pay As You Go Customer Service Team Duty Manager, which I was given a promised that the investigation is still undergoing by ID Fraud Team and it was confirmed that there was an internal / external fraud with an EE Agent stole my mobile number with a SIM swap, which the criminal pretending to be me and requests to have my number transferred to another SIM card on 27 Jun 2021. Per the investigation log, they confirmed the customer service log that the ID Fraud Team will port my number back to my existing SIM ASAP and provide me with an official reply on the root cause and solutions to prevent it from happening again in the next couple of days.
Thus, EE confirmed there should be an internal message popped up in the system prior to any porting activity, which myself has explicitly requested additional identity checking and confirmation is required for any porting actions. Apparently, one of your EE staff has known, or could reasonably be expected to have known that my EE Pay As You Go Number has a secondary market value and intentionally bypassed the two layers passwords without my consent. They promised to provide me with a written confirmation email after the call regarding the conversation details, together with the expected time of completion and prevention method to avoid this internal/external account takeover fraud from happening again.
31 AUG 2021
I am most annoyed that I wasted almost a month waiting for EE ID Fraud Team, or any EE representative to provide me with an official feedback. My impression of the UK’s largest mobile service provider has been tarnished, and I am now concerned about how the business, internal fraud staff control is being managed by your firm. Furthermore, EE inability to resolve my complaints and disputes with almost a month has meant that the lack of proper ID Fraud Control Measures implemented within EE, and the poor Customer Services and Complaint Handling Management, plus the additional time and effort have had to engage to the complaint, and incur the expense, for contacting EE on a routine basis for following up the Investigation progress.
I trust this is not the way EE wishes to conduct business with valued customers. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss matters further and to learn of how you propose to prevent a similar situation from recurring. I look forward to hearing from you within the next 5 days' deadline in order to resolve this matter amicably.
Yours faithfully,
Donald
