ok, hope someone here can help. so i checked my bank account last month and noticed a payment from telefonica. this payment was for a land line which i do not have. i phoned my bank and they refunded. i then noticed the same thing again this month, again the bank refunded it.

i thought it may be a good idea to check previous months and i see that since November 2011 i have been paying the phone bill for someone's telefonica land line, yes i know i should have noticed it earlier but i didn't.
so after speaking to the bank and them informing me they can only refund payments with 55 days i called telefonica. well i am sure you can imagine how helpful they were! i was told that without the owner of the phone numbers NIE number there was nothing i could do. they wouldn't even allow me to cancel the payment from my bank account.

they are refusing to refund me for the payments and they say that without the NIE number there is nothing i can do! i have tried calling the number i am being charged for but there is no reply.

any help or advice out there?

How did they get your bank details in the first place? We have phone and internet with them but have always refused to give our account details.

Maybe a bit off topic, but how do you pay your bill if they do not have your bank details? Only ask because we may have the joy of setting up an account with them shortly!

i have no idea how they have my account number?!?! they told me the name of the person who has the phone number and they believe that his name is on that bank account. it isn't! we did have telefonica 4, maybe 5 years ago so they could have got the number that way.

they are flat out refusing to refund the payments or cancel the account.

Ask them to come along and remove the land line as it does not work.

Rosemary

Excellent answer.

actually it probably won't work come to think of it

when I rang them to get the phone transferred from my late husband's name to mine, & bank account details etc., changed, they wanted his NIE or passport number - both of which I have, of course ............ but neither number corresponded to the number they had on record

luckily I remembered that when we had originally got the phoneline, it was supposed to have been through another company & they had essentially just made a number up - after several weeks of no phone or internet I called telefonica & explained the situation, saying I didn't want this other company now but needed to get connected - it was connected within 36 hours......but they still had this odd NIE number - we decided to let well alone ..........

the number appeared on all the bills - so I dug a bill out - all sorted, although for some reason it's still in his name, but at least it's going out of my account


actually - hmaloney, you could tell them you want printed bills sent to your house - the number will be on them - it might work................

i'll give getting them to send the bill to my address a go. i have the phone number and the name of the person who is on the account, but i need his NIE. they probably won't send me a bill as I will have to provide the NIE to be able to change the address! so annoying!

It's always a good idea to hold onto any official number, even if it is changed, if you used your UK passport number, and you have renewed since, then it will be the OLD number you need, so never throw anything away. In most of the EU, you get a passport number for life, same with a bank card number, not the account number, but the long number on your card, always keep a note of it just in case. otherwise it could be expensive.

very good point

the other funny thing is that they tend to pad out your passport number with leading zeros , but the payment system ignores them so if they ask just take them off even if the fact is that that is the number they sent you ...

We went through a company called 'Telefonica in English' to set up the account. We were very naive at the time and had only been learning spanish for a few months so we thought they were actually part of Telefonica - they aren't. So we paid them to get the line and ADSL set up while we were waiting for the house to be finished. Telefonica happily came round and set everything up but never asked us for bank account details. They then sent us another bill which is when we found out that Telefonica in English were a separate company. So we paid twice but the upside is that we have never given bank details to Telefonica.
As for how we pay the bill - they send it to us in the post and we go online and pay it from the bank account. If it doesn't arrive in the post on time, which happens quite often, you can still check the amount on line. If the connection is lost, which also happens quite often, you can ring 1004 and ask how much it is then go to any post office and pay it.

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply. I will try and make sure we do not hand over any bank details unless absolutely necessary!

Oh you are very welcome and best of luck.