I'm in an ongoing drama with Spark. I have a landline phone. I rang a business's local (which means free for me) land line phone. That business operates an IVR I believe it is called. A machine answered my call and said which option did I require. I picked option 1 and was transferred to a person who I spoke with. I rang the same business land line number another time and picked option 2. The phone was not answered, I got a voice mail saying to leave a message. I did not leave a message.

I was shocked to discover when my Spark bill arrived I had been charged for calls to two different mobile phones, on the days I rang this local business landline number. It took a long while before I figured out what was happening.

I know what is happening I just don't know how it is happening. And neither do Spark, who have constantly tried to gaslight me.

But, it hasn't just happened to me. I know of another person, using a landline phone to call this land line number who also got stung with hidden mobile phone charges.

What is happening is this business is transferring all calls that come into its landline number to different mobile phone numbers and somehow making this transfer a collect call or reverse charge call, WITHOUT warning the caller this is happening. And when the Spark bill arrives it looks as though the person actually made calls directly to the mobile phone themself.

I know I did not push those numbers into my handset. The number I dialled was a local number so should not have even registered on my Spark account.

The business that is doing this is also a Spark customer.

Spark have told me, what I already knew, when a business transfers a call like this the business pays for this transfer "Typically, when calls are transferred via a IVR phone system, the receiver is charged if the call is diverted to their mobile phone."

A friend went into a Spark business hub in person and asked about it and was told it was not possible to do this using normal business phone systems. And yet it is happening.

Spark have finally admitted to me, after I made a complaint to the TDR, that charges were incorrectly applied to my account and that they were doing something about it with regard to the business in question. As of yesterday they hadn't as I know of someone who tested it out yesterday and the call forwarding system this business uses is still working as an undisclosed collect call. 

As I have told Spark, repeatedly, this is totally unacceptable, and amounts to fraud from where I am standing. 

I'm assuming there is a fault or problem somewhere with the software that runs all of this.

But maybe not, maybe there is actually a way this can happen but most people, including all of Spark tech people are not aware of it.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Thanks.