Dear Editor,
In the late morning on Tuesday, December 6, a neighbour apparently received two calls from us in quick succession. As he did not know what we wanted, he called us back. We explained to him that we had not made any calls to him – all rather confusing. We then looked at the balance remaining on our ‘pay as you go’ phone and saw that we had been charged for one or both of our phantom calls.
The next day we went to the MEO office at Guia Shopping to make a complaint and, at the very least, to get our money re-charged. We were told that we would receive a reply within 48 hours. At 47 hours and 58 minutes we received the reply, which we thought was less than helpful. MEO were taking the line that we had to pay for call/calls which had come from our phone. During a long and rather heated exchange we repeated the essence of our complaint:
a. we did NOT make the call/calls in question; and
b. at the specific time of the calls we were in Faro Hospital for an outpatient appointment and that the time could be verified by the hospital.
The MEO representative then said: “You must have had the phone in your pocket and a key got depressed accidentally sending these calls.” There was no coherent explanation how something like this could occur several times in less than five minutes. There was also no explanation when we said that the scenario as set out could not have happened because the phone was switched off and had been left in our car as we did not want calls during the period of the hospital appointment.
In view of our experience, it would seem sensible for readers to monitor cash balances on ‘pay as you go’ phones and probably itemised bills as well to identify outgoing calls which are/were impossible. If any reader has suggestions about what has happened, we would be grateful to receive them. Incidentally, we have a print-out of these various incoming/outgoing calls.
John Hunt
Paderne
