Over 50 Granadinos have been receiving phone bills for mobile numbers that they don’t even possess – the culprit is identity theft. Take the case of Gustavo…

For over six months he has been receiving phone bills from a telephone company for a number that he does not possess, and from a mobile-phone company with whom he has no contract. The very first bill that he received from them was for 31 euros; he immediately phoned them to find out what was happening. They asked him whether he had visited a certain telephone shop and signed up for a free mobile phone. He replied that he most certainly had not. They told him not to worry and that they would rectify the problem… but they didn’t.

Not only did they continue to send him bills, but they even threatened to put him on a blacklist, which would ruin any credit rating that he might have. Gustavo is still stuck in the situation that he had no part in provoking.

What is happening is that certain people are quite simply stealing bank statements from post boxes and using the banking info and name to sign up for free mobile phones that come with certain contracts. Evidently, the fault lies with these shops that are so eager to make a sale, that they don’t ask for ID.

So what can you do if it happens to you? Well, according to the Consumer’s Rights Bureau, forget about expecting understanding and cooperation from the said mobile operators – an amicable conversation will not solve the problem.

The first thing you should do is send a registered letter demanding to see a copy of the contact bearing your signature – which obviously doesn’t exist. You should also send a copy of this letter to a Consumer Protection Agency. The onus is on the company to prove that you took out the contract; not on you to prove that you didn’t.

If the problem persists, i.e., you continue to receive bills, you should write to the Secretaria de Comunicación, which is the governing body. By this stage, in 90% of cases, the mobile operator will recognise their error, but if they don’t then you will have to take legal action because the falsification of somebody’s signature is a criminal offence.

What about the blacklist? Well, that’s an entirely different problem, because as you are not paying those bills, you will inevitably end up on it. Mind you, in these times, just about everybody is on the bloody thing anyway, if you have missed Social-Security payments, for example.

Thanks to a relatively recent Supreme-Court decision (the blighters have to be useful for something, surely) if you are included on the blacklist unjustly, leading to a third party to refuse you credit, for example, then the company is liable for damages.

As we said earlier in the article, however, apart from the culpability of the actual person that steals your identity to avail himself of a free phone, the shops concerned share equal blame because they should photocopy your ID and attach it to the contract, but as some are only interested in earning the commission on the contract, you could probably turn up with a 3-day beard, claiming that you are Miss Smith and they will still sign you up.

(News: Granada, Andalucia)