£1,400 bill for stolen phone

A student has been told that he must pay Orange more than £1,400 after thieves are believed to have stolen his mobile phone and made more than 1,000 calls to premium rate numbers. In the space of 19 hours, Jonathan Barnes's phone was used to make 1,385 calls to television quiz channels charging 90p a time. The phone also sent 261 premium text messages.

Because the 20-year-old business student took nearly a day to report his phone missing, Orange has told him that he has to pay for the calls.Despite protests from Mr Barnes and his father, an Anglican vicar, and the peculiar pattern of calls, the company says it has no evidence that the phone was stolen.

Mr Barnes, in his third year at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff, said he was sickened by Orange's attitude: "I'm pretty angry with them. Given that these calls were so unusual, why didn't it trigger an alarm?"

He said his phone was lost or taken on June 8 after he finished a late shift at Tesco. He said he realised that the phone was missing the following morning but did not ring Orange to cancel the phone until later that evening.

A few days later a bill for £1,438 arrived from Orange. It showed that the first calls to television quiz stations began at 3.53am on June 8.

"They were ringing these numbers all day, four or five times a minute," Mr Barnes said. "I was working at Tesco for nine of those hours and there are witnesses who will say I was there. But Orange say they are not liable and have told me to pay it off in instalments."

His appeal to Orange has been backed by his mother, Elwyn, and father, the Rev Christopher Barnes, the rector of Burton and Rosemarket, Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire. "Jonathan's usual bill would average £30 to £40," said Mrs Barnes.

The calls included 278 to the digital channel ITV Play. Tapes released by the channel show that the caller gave his name as "Michael from Cardiff" and failed to get any answers right.

In a letter to Mr Barnes, Orange pointed out that he had phoned ITV Play 10 times in the past – eight times on a Sunday in May, once in December and once in January.