Vodafone IMEI Blocking not-stolen Phones?

Ste.phen

Hi,
if this is the wrong board, let me know, the Mobiles-PDAs / Wireless forum gap is a little ambiguous...

I'll post back later with copies of the relevant correspondance with O2, but for now here's the situation:

Basically put, both my brother and father have had phones IMEI blacklisted. Both phones were in use on O2, one was originally bought on vodafone and unlocked (by Voda i think), and the other was bought on, and always used on O2 (but with a different SIM card than the one it was supplied with).

Neither of the phones is / was stolen, and nor do i think there's any reason they'd have been reported stolen.

My brother's been emailing O2 about this, and i can get copies of the emails for you guys later, my dad called O2 this morning, who referred him to vodafone.

What O2 basically said was "Vodafone have blacklisted your phone, theres nothing we can do about it, talk to them".
I presume this means its on the C-EIR.

Vodafone havent yet replied to my brothers emails, but my dad managed to get in touch with them earlier; they wouldnt tell him WHY the phone was blocked, but said if he forwarded proof of purchase for the phone they'd unblock it.

This isnt really an option, his phone's a nokia 3210 which, as far as i can remember, was bought as an upgrade phone on my mother's old Eircell contract account. In 2000 or thereabouts. Needless to say the receipt is long gone.

My brother's phone is a 3510i he bought from Tesco in June/July of last year, i dont think we have the receipt for that either, but as i work in the same branch of Tesco i may be able to get a printout of the receipt from the back-end system and get someone in the store to stamp it.

Anyways, to summarise:
Vodafone have apparently blocked 2 of our families phones, neither of which were stolen.
THey thusfar havent even suggested that this is WHY they're stolen, but i cant think of any other reason they'd be blocked.

Any ideas?

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Igy
Anyways, to summarise:
Vodafone have apparently blocked 2 of our families phones, neither of which were stolen.
THey thusfar havent even suggested that this is WHY they're stolen, but i cant think of any other reason they'd be blocked.

Any ideas?

They dont just randomly barr phones.

They would have recieved a request to barr a specific IMEI, verified that the person owned the phone and then checked their CDRs to verify that a call was made from the customers number using that IMEI/handset. When they reference the CDRs, if another handset/IMEI was used on the same day as that call, an error wil be thrown up and the handset will not be barred.

So in order for Vodafone's customer care department to bar the phone, the IMEI would have to have been used with a specific Vodafone number for a 24 period, or that person would have had to put their sim in ur dads handset, make a call and then not make another call for that day or have made one before.

BrianD

I would suggest a formal letter of complaint to O2, stating that you are the owner of both phones and that you are unable to access the O2 network. State how long you have been using the network etc. It would be a good idea to cc ComReg with your correspondence. Don't suggest that you believe that the may be blocked because of being stolen, let them do the explaining.

Asking you to provide the proof of purchase is unfair. If their is a dispute like this the operator should be asking both parties (assuming somebody has reported your phone as teir stolen phone in error or deliberately) to provide relevant documentation. You may be able to show that prior to the IMEi being blocked you were using it for a cosiderable ength of time etc. You also should ave documentation from the "porting" from Vf to O2 (they ask you for a letter from Vf to state the you own the phone).

jesus_thats_gre

Your imei is sent to the operator when you make a call. Might be handy knowing that.

Ste.phen

sorry for not getting back to this thread sooner, mad week in college.

jesus_thats_gre, i'm aware the IMEI is sent as soon as the phone connects to the network, your other post was pretty much suggesting either a) the phones are stolen, or b) i'm talking ****e.

The phones are almost certainly barred, the symptom being: phone connects to network (whichever one), network commands (*#100# etc) work ok, but incming and outgoing SMS fail, and all calls are met with "short beep, short gap, short beep, short gap..."
The possibility remains that this is O2s fault, and they're passing the buck to vodafone, but i find it odd that my brother and dad were both given the same explanation if O2 are just talking crap.


BrianD, I think thats the course of action we'll take, soon as this postal strike is over there's a few angry letters going out.

jesus_thats_gre

I didn't mean to sugges that you were talking ****e, was merely looking at it from a different perspective.

It just seems weird that the two phone, one bought from Vodafone and the the other from O2, are both barred at the exact same time. The only connection between both phones is that they are both owned by someone in your family.

Is the phone that is used with the Vodafone sim card able to send and rec sms by any chance?

halkar

Mmmmmm this got me thinking Does Vodaphone or O2 block phones if one uses different sim card ? Since as stated earlier the phones are sending their IMEI. They can easily compare this to the IMEIs they have in their network and decide that the phone is or not belong to their network. I know it doesn't sound right and I am guessing they can't really do that but being in Ireland anything possible for these money grabbers

Oh m8 Igy, save yourselves hassle and bussle and go get 3 phones from Meteor, one for you, one for your brother and one for your father, calls to eachother will be cheap and with the call credit you get your phone price will be peanuts;) I have been with both O2 and Eircell-Vodaphone and moved my all family to Meteor. Savings are huge :cool:

Straight Flush

My Meteor SIM card no longer works on my unlocked Siemens, bought from Vodafone. I've emailed Meteor and I'm waiting for their reply.

BigMoose

The networks dont block phones just cause you use a different SIM in it. They will only block the IMEI if reported stolen. They will bar the SIM if you report it stolen, it runs out of credit or you dont pay your bills.

Phones bought on one network are typically locked to that network in Ireland - but if this was the case in this thread you wouldn't get as far as # commands. There are meany threads about unlocking phones and once done, assuming the IMEI is not reported stolen you can use it with any SIM on any network.

coolio_64

how can they block your imei

Ste.phen

Both the phones are already unlocked and were in use on O2, one was unlocked by myself using the DCT4 calculator, the other was unlocked by voda themselves.

My dad has since bought a new 3510i on O2 anyways, and my brother bought my T68i from me so i think i'll just forget about it, once my T610 is safe i'm happy


jesus_thats_gre, neither of the phones were currently in use on Vodafone actually, we're all o2 / meteor (heh, 9 numbers for 5 people, lovely eh?) here except my mother, i didnt think to try her sim card actually.

jesus_thats_gre

I would suggest mixing and matching working sim cards with the phones you think are barred to see what happens, you never know..

If possible, could you try sending an sms when you have a vodafone sim in one of the problem phones and post back here how you get on?

coolio_64

but how can they block them!!

BigMoose

how can they block your imei

If a handset is reported stolen, the network will blacklist the IMEI in the EIR (Equipment Identity Register) and not allow it to use the network regardless of the SIM used. AFAIK all 3 Irish networks share a common EIR thus a stolen phone is useless on all 3 networks

coolio_64

i see interesting

is the phone totally useless

passive

Hi. one of those phones was mine.

and heres what happened:

I reported a 3510 stolen in june. i bought a new 3510
In november the new phone stopped working
Nobody in o2 customer care knew what was wrong. i brought it to be repaired (phone repair centre). i was told it was blocked by the network
While it was blacklisted by o2 igy "unlocked it using the DCT4 calculator" and it worked fine on the other networks for a few days before reading "sim registration failed"

by the end of December o2 had figured it out and unblacklisted it for me.
By then i had gotten used to the t68i and ignored my now fixed 3510.
when i tried it again in mid January i found it was again blocked.
i took to explaining it to o2 customer care again..but again, they didn't understand.
eventually after i got very pissed off with them they checked around a bit more and by early march they told me "it is no longer blocked by us. it is blocked by vodafone. when a phone is blocked on 1 network it will not function on any others. this is the problem. we apologise will try find out why this phone was ever blocked by us (but chances are we will never e-mail you again) but we are afraid we can't ask vodafone to unblock it for you" ((one of them did say that the IMEI in question had been blocked in place of the one i reported in June, but i got the impression that was a guess))

anyway. just as i was told that by o2 (about 2 weeks ago); my Dads phone stopped working (the 4 year old 3210). the only connection i can see is that he used his (o2)sim in my 3510 and it worked for a few days (this was while it wasn't working for my o2 sim) before stopping...
He called them, i e-mailled (we decided to handle it seperately to avoid confusion). He was put through to the "fraud" department and told he had to prove he owned the phone. As igy said he bought a new one anyway and is sending a letter of complaint (as soon as an post is fixed)

i e-mailled vodafone explaining the situation and showing copies of my email exchange with o2 and got a reply from earlier saying "Can you please provide proof of purchase for your mobile phone, imei number ***********, for example your receipt or invoice. This is for security purposes before we can lift the barring."

i most definately don't still have a receipt for this phone and thus, cannot provide one.
i know its my phone and this has all been a mistake (o2's mistake) so there's no way it was actually reported stolen...therefore without a receipt its my word against an error?
Though, from this e-mail the (and way my dad was spoken to), i get the impression that its a strict rule and they won't make exceptions. how should i reply to this?
i'd have personally gone for pleading. Igy suggest angrily pointing out that its mine & they can no more show why they blocked it than i can produce a receipt..
i'd like to know exactly how to go about this before replying though as i don't want to get into month long e-mail exchanges as happened with o2 before they transferred the blame.

any and all advice appreciated (or just the helpful kind)

flywheel

maybe contact ComReg and see if they can offer any advice..

any way to see if the place you got the phone have the ability to re-issue a receipt for you?

then there is always the press / radio if you don't have any joy through more regular channels - sounds like a nightmare and Pat Kenny was covering a few cases of number porting going bad a while back (ref: here and here)

BrianG

John R

The whole idea that you have to prove it is not stolen is offensive. Their placing your equipment details on a blacklist is one step away from publicly calling you a criminal. If they did that to me I would write a letter threatening legal action for defamation of character and also demand compensation for the time and resources spent sorting this out.

BigMoose

I dont quite understand how the blocked phone worked for a while with someone elses SIM (all be it briefly). Are you sure it's the phone/IMEI that is blocked and not the SIM? Although you have said you use the same SIM in another phone no probs... weird!

I dont know the inner workings of the EIR but I thought that once an IMEI was on it, then good night, phone wont work with any Irish SIM/operator...

If I find out any more I'll post back, but it sounds like ComReg or legal action is your only options...

BrianD

My advice:

Forget e-mails and phone calls. Post all communication (though this may be difficult at present).

Copy all correspondence to ComReg and make this clear on your letters.

State that you no longer have proof of purchase. You can establish ownership by the length of time you have being using the phone. The fact that you are clearly identifying yourself should make clear that you are bona fide and have nothing to hide.

Ask them to state when the IMEI was blocked and by whom (they may not reveal the whom).

John R there is no defamation of character by what the networks are doing by blacklisting the phone nor is there a compensation issue. The blacklisting is to protect the consumer. However, there must be some sort of speedy system in place that allows this problem to be resolved.

In many ways, the operators are inviting this problem on themselves. Their should be mandatory registration of pay as you go phones (as in Australia). This means that the correct owner of the phone can be identified and proof of purchase should not be required.

I didn't think you could bypass the IMEI blocking by using a DCT4 calculator!

jesus_thats_gre

You are not able to bypass the C-EIR by using the NAC code on a handset.

What I presume happened was that the IMEI was blacklisted on O2's EIR alone and not the C-EIR. O2's EIR database was possibly later added to the C-EIR in January, thus preventing you using your handset on all operators.

I would be inclined to blame the network that the handset stopped operating on first. If its a case that O2 barred the phone and later added it to the C-EIR, the likes of Vodafone or Meteor will not be able to tell you why the handset is barred. There is no note added to the IMEI on the EIR saying why it has been barred.

The only place the reason for the barring would be stored is in O2's CRM/Call Logging tool that customer care uses. Searches in these tools can normally only be carried out by Mobile number or Customer number, I am nearly 100% that none allow searching by IMEI(wouldnt have made sense when they were developed). So if you present the operator with an IMEI alone, they will only be able to tell you that it is barred.

So the key to getting the exact reason for the barring, is providing O2 with the mobile numbers that the barring was requested on. I hope you get it sorted, must be a right pain!

passive

okay. keeping in mind all your advice i have prepared this:
i'm just checking for a second opinion. does this seem okay or is there anything else i should mention?


"Dear vodafone,

I no longer have the receipt or invoice for this phone. This phone was bought nearly a year ago and has been in my possession since then. I generally don't keep receipts, nevermind archiving them for use in the distant future.
with this in mind; can i ask if you have a reason on record for why the IMEI is blocked? i was under the impression that you have it blocked as a direct consequence of o2's mix-up (in place of my old IMEI) in November. Can i ask that you discuss this with them to confirm that this was their mistake and that ************* is my phone?

I don't understand exactly how I got passed from o2 to you. someone suggested to me that after o2 had blacklisted and then unblacklisted the IMEI in november/december that "O2's EIR database was possibly later added to the C-EIR in January, thus preventing you using your handset on all operators."
despite that possibility i still can't understand how my situation changed from being "blocked by o2 " to "cleared on o2, but blocked by vodafone (preventing access on all networks)" and while, ideally, i'd prefer for o2 to explain this to me they seem to have stopped replying once responsibility was shifted successfully to this network.

I do not have a receipt to prove ownership, but this IMEI was blocked by accident. It should not be a case of me having to prove my ownership for an item i bought nearly a year ago that functioned fine until a mistake was made by the network i was using at the time.

thanks again,
i would appreciate a reply whenever possible."

any tips on improvement or any better way of phrasing this would be appreciated

jesus_thats_gre

I would suggest asking both O2 and Vodafone for the process they follow when a customer claims to own a handset and requests it to be barred...

Then manipulate their response into a valid argument backing you up...