Vodafone apologises for 'stop calling Police' text

Vodafone apologises for 'stop calling Police' text

Vodafone has apologised to a Christchurch woman for sending a text in error advising her to stop calling 111 after she called police for help three times.

Marilyn Cleminson, of Waltham, said she was horrified to receive the text asking her to stop dialling 111 after making several legitimate calls to the emergency number on September 26.

"How dare they text that? I feel I cannot ring 111 any more." Cleminson called for help after she was threatened by a person who does not live at her house. The text she got back read: "This no. has been iDd as making multiple pocket calls to 111. Pls take steps to ensure this stops, such as using ur keypad lock at all times. Thank u."

Vodafone spokeswoman Alison Sykora said after going through records they realised the text was sent in error. "We sincerely apologise for this. Reports of calls made to 111 are checked and any that may be in error are looked into individually. If we believe that the calls were made in error, we send a message to alert the person. The intent of the text message is to reduce accidental or prank calls to 111."

However, the suspect 111 calls were not stopped from reaching emergency services. Vodafone could not provide information about the number of texts sent to its customers but last month it sent text messages to about 7 per cent of the numbers that were investigated, Sykora said. A threshold of five calls to 111 prompted an investigation.

Inspector Bryan Buck, of the Southern Communications Centre, said police had received three calls from Cleminson. The first call was taken at 5.53pm and police were sent to her house, but the officers did not see Cleminson, who was hiding in her car around the corner, he said. "The woman rang back two more times and we assigned a Sydenham sergeant to go back. Unfortunately, he got diverted to an urgent job in Riccarton, then the (Stephen Bellingham) shooting happened."

The text to Cleminson was not at the police's request. "I didn't know they did that. Police have nothing to do with that sort of thing." However, police did have a formal arrangement with telecommunications companies in extreme cases where someone was making multiple calls to police, he said. "Last week someone rang the emergency number 67 in one evening. In that instance we rang the telecommunications company to immobilise the phone." A Telecom spokeswoman said they did not have a 111 text-back system for mobile phones.