Scam number

[#1]

My husband had to ring the dwp about his ESA claim and found the number on the internet. When he rang the number on the home phone it didn't say anything about charges and went through to someone saying "thank you for calling the ESA helpline someone will be with you in a few minutes" after being on hold 11 minutes the phone hung up. My husband then tried the number on his mobile twice and it did the same. After checking both bills we could see we had been charged £41 from yourselves and £85 by O2. After looking into the number more it turns out it's a scam number. Why wasn't this picked up by Plusnet and is there anything you can do about our phone bill which is now over £80 pound

[#2]

@gamble12 Unfortunately, if you make the call, Plusnet (or any phone provider) do not/cannot pick up that it is a scam number - the technology does not exist.

For future reference, if you want to find any government departments number ONLY use the  gov.uk website ( https://www.gov.uk/ )

[#3]

---

@gamble12 wrote:
... and found the number on the internet.
...
Why wasn't this picked up by Plusnet ...
and is there anything you can do about our phone bill which is now over £80 pound

---

One might equally ask ...

• Why did the internet page you got the number from not give you a warning?
• Why when presented with a 09xxx or 0844 number (or any number no 01, 02 or 03) did alarm bells not ring with you?
• Why did you not use the number on the documentation from the DWP?
• Why did not not make sure that the resource you used to obtain the number was legitimate?

There are nasty people out there trying to rob us all of our cash - vigilance is down to us as individuals - not someone else.

As for the last point, unfortunately just learn a difficult lesson expensively.  Would we really want the technology to be present to check every call we make?  That would be for too much like an Orwellian 1984!