A FURIOUS businessman has issued a warning to East Lancashire firms after discovering how phone calls cost him £1,500 and netted an employee free cigarettes and whisky.

Joe Lee, boss of Blackburn-based Crown Eyeglass, found out that one of his employees had been using the firm's phone system to call a £1 per minute premium rate phone line.

If callers stay on the phone long enough they receive gifts such as cigarettes and CD players. The firm which organises the phone lines receives a proportion of the cost of the phone call.

"This is outrageous and other companies should be aware of it," said Mr Lee.

"Our employee had been using this number for around a year to get free cigarettes.

"He would come into work, dial the number and then leave it off the hook for hours."

Cigarettes and a bottle of whisky were then sent to his home address in return. For a 45 minute phone call - which cost Crown Eyeglass £45 - he received cigarettes worth £17.50.

The employee, who also contacted the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, said he had spotted the number for the premium rate phone line in a Sunday paper.

"It was a spur of the moment thing to try it. It was stupid and I have offered to pay the firm back."

The employee has since left the company.

Telephone company boss Tony Raynor, who also chairs watchdog OFTEL's advisory committee for East Lancashire, said it was the first he had heard of the new money-making operation. "This is disgraceful. This service is clearly specifically targetted at people who work for companies and is encouraging staff to effectively steal from their employers," said Mr Raynor.

He said all modern telephone systems could prevent calls being made to premium rate lines but problems sometimes arise when new prefixes were introduced.

"The easiest way is to get BT to bar them at the exchange and then if new numbers are introduced they will be covered."

Now Mr Raynor is to raise the matter at the next meeting of OFTEL's advisory committee and ask the watchdog to look into the matter.

A spokesman for ICSTIS, the watchdog for the premium rate phoneline industry, stressed it was up to individuals to choose whether to use so-called 'pay-for-products' services.

"Companies are responsible for their own phone line security and can use call barring if they are concerned about employees using premium rate services."

He said only companies which charged £1.50 a minute or more had to get prior permission to introduce new services but that it did investigate complaints made against individual operators and gave out the name of the firm operating each premium line number if requested.

But when the Lancashire Evening Telegraph asked ICSTIS to trace the company it discovered it had not been registered with them and could not explain why.

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