Outage at EE wrecks voice calls across the UK EE customers have been hit with a nationwide outage, with many unable to make calls this morning. According to monitoring site Down Detector, the problem first emerged around 8am this morning. Customers in London and the South East appear to have been hit the hardest. But folk were also reporting problems in Blackpool, …
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"And as the plane crashed down he thought
"Well, isn't this nice."
is the only quotable example in that song."
Isn't it ironic that a song about things being ironic only has a single ironic statement in it?
Yo dawg...this statement is ironically about the lack of irony in your 'irony'.
EE delivered an unsolicited text that was an obvious fraud spam at 01:30 the other night. It claimed I had nearly three thousand pounds due to me "for your accident" - and gave a ".mobi" domain site link.
Google found an EE customer forum question/answer that revealed there is a SPAM reporting number 7726. Couldn't find anything official on that subject on the EE web site.
Forwarded the text to 7726. Almost instantaneous reply saying they needed the number from which it had been sent. I replied with a single line of the number starting +44. Then received another reply from EE saying "Sorry, couldn't retrieve the content" - whatever that means.
If they are serious about blocking such unsolicited texts then they should have a clear faq somewhere saying the format they need for the notification. I wouldn't be surprised if my PAYG account was charged for those text messages I sent to 7726.
I feel your pain as I too have received a fraud spam text (at exactly 3am) that allegedly came from a short code number. I forwarded the message to 7726 and was asked for the number. When I provided that they said as it was a short code I just needed to opt out. I didn't sign up to receive messages from that number or indeed any other number. As such the last thing I'm going to do is respond to a text from it. I did add it to my block list immediately though.
EE once delivered to me a Spam SMS that spoofed a real Barclays Bank number (I'd changed bank some months before, so immediately smelt a rat. For fucks sake. How hard is it to compare SMSs to a list of legit numbers from banks, gov agencies and utility companies?
This morning, during the call outage, EE successfully sent me a "you have used 80% of your data allowance" yet were unable to send me an SMS informing me of the voice call outage.
Since I'm on a rolling monthly SIM-only tariff, I think I'll ring them up tomorrow and threaten to ditch then lest they bump up my data allowance. I've said it before - buy your handset outright, never through a carrier. An additional bonus is that you're covered by the Sales of Goods Act, and don't have to put up with sending your phone off to be repaired should it develop a fault - just demand a refund.
"EE once delivered to me a Spam SMS that spoofed a real Barclays Bank number [...]"
Had one like that - saying that my payment had been rejected and to phone the enclosed "Barclays" number to sort it out. Took me ages to contact the Barclays fraud department from their web site information.
They checked it out and decided it must have been someone doing a smart phone payment who had previously entered the wrong (viz my) number in their online account details. As I had never given Barclays my mobile number - they could see there was no way I could have attempted a phone transaction. They couldn't locate the other person's account using a trawl for my mobile number. They decided the person had corrected their mistake when they didn't get the reply for their payment.
I was surprised they couldn't locate a log of the failed transaction.
They gave me a direct line number to the fraud department in case anything amiss did happen.
Erm, I don't know which Sale of Goods Act you're reading but after the first 30 days you're not entitled to a refund by default, the retailer only had to repair or replace it. They also have 30 days at least to do so. You're only entitled to a refund it they fail to do that. You will also still have to return the item, at your expense (unless agreed otherwise in the T&Cs). That's why the carriers are able to get you to return for repair. Not sure why you would think the Sale of Goods Act doesn't cover contract sales just like any other sale.
Incidentally the Sale of Goods Act was actually scrapped a couple of years ago and replaced with the (similar) Consumer Rights Act, but please try to get your facts right before posting such things as you're misleading other people.
"When I provided that they said as it was a short code I just needed to opt out. I didn't sign up to receive messages from that number or indeed any other number. As such the last thing I'm going to do is respond to a text from it. I did add it to my block list immediately though."
I had this happen to me for some chargeable fitness service. I never signed up but the registration was valid. You need to cancel it. You can do it by contacting the provider if you don't want to reply to the text. Otherwise you likely will be charged and it can be a PITA to get a refund. And if you blocked the number you wont see the likely now chargeable messages!
When I contacted the provider they were adamant I had visited a web page and confirmed a service, which I know I did not and no one else has access to my device. I believe the underlying cause was Malware in the Google Play Store called "ExpensiveWall" - likely on a wallpaper app I downloaded. Android is such an insecure pile of poo...
If this is likely what happened to you then please report it to https://psauthority.org.uk/for-consumers/making-an-enquiry as well as the vendor.
The vendor absolutely refused to acknowledge any possibility that someone had not signed up to the service...
Not Ofcom that is responsible for the sewer that is premium rate fraud. At least so they keep on saying while passing the buck to Phonepayplus or whatever they call themselves now.
A "Regulator" that allows the frauds to go on so they can get bigger fines out of them. Which funds them. The regulator is a fraudster itself.
"They've had that bug for 6 or 7 years (at least) now.
Insisting on the number (as if they couldn't cross-correlate it anyway), and then rejecting it."
Always works fine for me on EE. I report them and then cut and paste the number in the next text.
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""Traffic congestion has been reduced to enable the recovery to service of affected voice platforms. A controlled reintroduction of traffic is now in progress""
So sounds like something failed and the backup didn't work, or it didn't have sufficient capacity to cope with the load. Anyone know if it effected emergency calls? They could get a chunky fine if it did!
lest we forget...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/25/emergency_services_network_to_be_hit_by_delays_warn_mps/
'the committee found that the ESN “may require more testing and assurance work than the current December 2019 delivery date seems to allow for," said the PAC report.'
Have faith- this is probably EE just throttling back on their customers voice calls in readiness for a major emergency so that they can give priority to the Emergency Services and all the other responders when they take over the Emergency Services Network next year, or is it 2019 or 2020? Anyway, they must know what they are doing and EE customers have to appreciate that the ESN provider is going to have to prioritise services every now and then .....
"The issue affecting calls yesterday was resolved by our engineering team last night at 6pm. Data, messaging and emergency calls were unaffected. We apologise for the inconvenience this caused. If you are still experiencing issues and have restarted your device, please call 150."
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