Guilty not guilty

[cupcakes aka dd]

I suppose this thread has been created as a word of warning to all forum members to make sure you end a call and then check a second time to make sure.

My partner is on a new £15 monthly contract and with it came a new phone. Imagine my horror when I recieved the latest bill only to discover one of the itemised calls had incurred an £18 charge for 90 minutes making my monthly total £33. I checked the number with my partner which was a freephone number 0800 and she concurred that she had called an entertainment agency we use regularly to book an entertainer for our youngests birthday party but was shocked to see the duration of the call which she said had lasted 15 minutes at most. We also checked the phones log and the call had been 90 minutes. I called Virgin Mobile and explained the problem only to be told what I already knew that the call had lasted 90 minutes.

I can only come to the conclusion that my partner had not ended the call as she had thought and neither had the other party. The woman at VM eventually agreed that this is probably what had happened (although I'm still not convinced) after trying to rationalise with her for a time explaining my partner would not have been able to make 90 minute personnel calls at work without being sacked. At no point was I offered the money back for the call and we are guilty until we can prove otherwise which we cannot.

Make sure you end your call. Imagine if the call had been 10 hours

[Kymmy]

If she called them then the other end would have had no way of ending the call, even if you hang up the call will still be live..

A few phone companies will refund the difference but they are perfectly within their rights not to..

[progers]

"Called Subscriber Held" as it is known in Telecomms does have a timeout. An alarm is raised if the called subscriber clears and the calling subscriber does not; in this case, there is a timeout and the call is cleared in three minutes.

So, in the case above, the called subscriber must not have cleared the call down; I would have a go at them, especially as you are spending money with them

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by cupcakes aka dd

Make sure you end your call. Imagine if the call had been 10 hours

Not that likely, phone would probably have run out of battery by then

No but in all seriousness, several phone companies have deliberate protections against this. 3 for example terminate all calls after exactly 120 minutes, O2 sometimes seems to after 60 minutes so you can't "accidentally" forget to hang up and leave a call running forever.

---------- Post added at 11:45 ---------- Previous post was at 11:42 ----------

Originally Posted by Kymmy

If she called them then the other end would have had no way of ending the call, even if you hang up the call will still be live..

That's a very old issue which no longer applies in the vast majority of cases. The recipient can almost always hang up, so the question here is why they did not.

A few phone companies will refund the difference but they are perfectly within their rights not to..

I partly agree here. Conditional on the fact that either party can hang up whenever they want, it's none of the phone company's business how long people choose to stay on the phone for.

I think the issue here is why neither party hung up after what was presumably 75 minutes of pocket rustling. I would personally lay blame on the entertainment agency (or their call handling system) for failing to hang up - if I receive a customer call that is silent or suddenly drops dead, I tend to hang up within 60 seconds not leave it running for 90 minutes...