I've been with Orcon for at least the last ten years and have been very happy with the service generally. Have run into a bit of bother though with my last billing period when a large number of unauthorised mobile calls appeared on our bill as having been made from our landline, to the tune of $70. Looking back, the number of unauthorised calls started as far back as January (2 calls), with 34 calls in Feb and then 49 in March. The calls seem to have stopped appearing after March 25th. Lots of different mobile numbers appear although there were 43 calls associated with one particular number and 18 to another, 23 of the calls were under 5 seconds duration, many for only one or two seconds duration and often within minutes of each other.

Needless to say, we didn't make the calls from our landline, there are only two of us in the property with no kids, flatmates or guests staying and we don't recognise any of the numbers. We both have mobile plans anyway which include free voicecalls so would use those services for mobile calls in any case. The unauthorised calls don't appear to be legitimate telephone activity, certainly not by ourselves.

I'm not here to bag Orcon particularly, just hoping for some advice really about what to do. Orcon for their part have looked into it and couldn't find anything untoward at the exchange or with the line itself.

Any suggestions as to how these charges could have appeared on our account? Is it possible to harbour some kind of computer virus to allows a landline to be hijacked for this sort of thing? Is that even possible?

Sanitised details of the calls below in case anyone can spot something obvious. Your thoughts would be very welcome.

- DM