There is no harm in being alert if you are not in an EU country, it may happen that strangers receive calls on your phone number without your knowledge. For the purpose of educating and informing, we are sharing the experiences of one of our readers, who uses Yettel’s subscription service at home, and who was surprised in Georgia, a country with 3 roaming fee zones.
Regarding roaming services, it should be noted in advance that if you fly to Georgia, you will have to pay a roaming fee of 3 €, about which local service providers will also send information by SMS after your arrival. Yettel’s partner network in Georgia is Magticom, with them calls to Hungary 889 forints / min, reception 375 forints / min, there are preset rates for sending SMS and data roaming. So, if someone receives calls from Hungary with a +36 prefix while abroad using their Hungarian phone number, it will cost 375 HUF per minute.
Our reader spent 10 days in Georgia, and after a few days he suspected he hadn’t received a single incoming call when connected to the Magticom network, and on the other hand, some acquaintance of his mentioned in an internet-based application that someone was answering his phone (when his Hungarian number was called) Sometimes a lady, sometimes a man, but there is only a strong “chatter” or maybe she speaks in a “strange” language, and there is no answer to the questions asked in English (as if the negotiating party does not even hear the other party’s questions).
In other words, it seems that it may happen that calls made to our telephone number in a foreign country will not be received by us, but by a completely different person.
When our reader contacted Yettel customer service, he was first told that call forwarding was definitely set up on his phone, but since he hadn’t turned it on (it wasn’t set on his phone, and he didn’t order call forwarding from the service provider), for every incoming call someone else did. Answering the phone, he said it was a completely unimaginable situation, to enter different Georgian numbers (probably) into the forwarding setup even every half minute. So customer service asked him to provide as accurate as possible details of the calls not received (exact time the call started, location, phone number) so they could investigate the issue. The reader was only able to correctly enter a few calls, with the help of his friends calling from home (one of those callers also had a Yetteles subscription).
The technical problem was not resolved either during the first report or later, that is, she could no longer receive calls or text messages, only the call initiation succeeded, so she reported her complaint to Yettel customer service. Regarding the complaint, upon further enquiry, received the information that the service provider sees that these calls are being made and restored, but the fault may be with the Georgian partner service provider, but they are still waiting for their response on a report – according to the information, they have 72 hours to send A foreigner report to a partner – and they can’t solve the problem until then.
Our reader later tried to connect to other networks, and by connecting to a network – not the network of said partner provider – the error temporarily disappeared, but this wasn’t always available in different parts of the country. So, a few days later, the phone rang again with strangers trying to reach him.
During and after the 10-day trip, there was no solution to the problem, roaming charges – i.e. all incoming calls picked up by someone – were charged, and the official response to the investigated complaint was received: Yettel’s technical team stated that The call was forwarded, so no roaming charge refund is warranted. They also stated that since the network infrastructure is operated abroad by foreign partners, the Hungarian service provider has no direct influence or insight into it.
Accordingly, the roaming charges billed by the person reporting the complaint must also be paid, despite the fact that he never answered the phone, And perhaps – according to him – it was even more annoying – that he did not even know who he called during this period, since his incoming calls were answered by strangers.
If you reside in a country outside the European Union, it pays to pay close attention to making sure that calls get through to us. Also, if someone experiences something similar, the best solution might be to turn off the phone (although it is not clear what the caller would encounter in this situation, and if someone would pick up the phone in the same way, perhaps the call initiator has stumbled on Automatic message, or will be turned off according to the reader’s report, depending on the manually selected network, callers also encountered an off state, but there were also times when an advertisement-like automated message was triggered, also generating micro-fees.)
We contacted Little about the strange incident
The question may be asked whether the above case is considered to be unique, whether there was an error during that period either with the local or foreign service provider, or whether our calls are a country-specific phenomenon being sent to strangers. In order to get answers to these questions, we contacted Yettel and received the following answers to the questions:
“In our internal system, we currently see no indication of the error the reader is referring to. With the modern technologies in use today, the ‘disconnection’ described by the reader cannot occur, a call made from Hungary cannot be sent by mistake to the foreign phone number. , that if the device is turned off, the calling party will hear an audio announcement from the foreign service provider that the specified phone number is not available, in which case they may encounter various audio announcements.However, in the case of certain SIM cards, in rare cases, they may Communication problems arise – our customers affected by the problem will be notified via SMS that the card can be replaced free of charge, however, this communication problem has nothing to do with the phenomenon complained of.
We can investigate a specific error after it is reported to the customer, with accurate call data. If we learn of the error from our customer, we will of course investigate and correct it. Based on legal requirements, our customers can report the specific issue to us with contact details not more than 3 days old. It’s important that Yettel can screen calls made from its own network, so that if an incoming call comes through another service provider, Yettel specialists can’t see that service provider’s carrier partners, as well as which systems the calls pass through and where they end up to. The calling service provider can verify this with their service provider. “
Little also recommended that subscribers who discover such an error should contact customer service with the specific case, or fill out the official web form on the web interface, so that competent colleagues can contact them as soon as possible.
Cover image source: Getty Images
