240-865-7013

Return call...message.  ALL CIRCUTS ARE BUSY.

I received a voice mail from Card Services tonight,they wanted to verify the number I was calling from and listed this number 240-865-7013, which of course is not my number. I called my bank and found out someone had stolen my credit card number and was using it to buy purchases that were suspect to my account, so they had put a flag on my account. I believe this fraud and the phone number are linked somehow. do not call this number to be on the safe side.

Nancy,

THE EXACT SAME THING happened to me on 2/8/09 with the stolen credit card number and my bank saying they had me calling from 240-865-7013.  It isn't my number or the number I called from.  I think it is linked to the fraud as well.

Actually after some digging, I think it has to do with having an internet phone service (Vonage).  Not the bank fraud.

According to my phone provider's web site, and my Answered Calls list, this number had a 1:27 minute call.  But they didn't talk to me.  I happened to be on the phone with a call that came in a few seconds before that one.  So who are they, who talked to them???  Nobody here.  I have tried calling them back several times, before I came to this site.  Busy every time.

I am another Vonage customer experiencing this very same thing.  My outbound calls sometimes appear to the receiver as 240-865-7013.  It appears that Vonage somehow overwrites callerID info with this generic number.  It is quite random.

Just posting an update..

It is not fraud.  I just dealt with Vonage on this issue.  A bug in Vonage's CallerID system (with phone numbers that had been ported to Vonage from another carrier, especially AT&T) can randomly display 240-865-7013 or 646-556-6196 (or perhaps other numbers) in place of the Vonage user's CallerID info.  Attempts to call these bogus numbers will likely result in a message along the lines of "We're sorry, your call did not go thru. Please try again." or "All circuits are busy." or just a repeated tone which indicates an invalid number, etc, etc.

Vonage notes that a support ticket typically resolves this issue.  Customer Service Reps can activate a monitoring tool, then have you unplug/replug the Vonage adapter, and then make 3 test calls.  This activates the monitoring tool and allows their *engineers* to see the incorrect CallerID info that is being displayed to the receiving party. (I say engineers here, b/c the Customer Service Reps themselves don't have access to the data generated from this tool)

If you are a Vonage customer, and your number was ported from another carrier, and you would like to see if you are affected, here are some steps you can follow:

1) Call a phone number which attempts to recite your number back to you (such as PayPal's Customer Service number: 866-837-1851 - which says "We see you are calling from.....")
2) If it recites the correct number to you, then call any other number (such as AT&T's 877-325-0445, or Comcast's 800-266-2278), then hangup and call that same number in #1 again.
3) Repeat #2 until you hear an incorrect number recited.

Those steps above, including those same phone numbers in the steps, were enough to reproduce this issue for Vonage.

Here is a related thread: https://800notes.com/Phone.aspx/1-646-556-6196

Thanks,
-Aaron