A Tauranga man slapped with a phone bill for more than $26,000 of calls he didn't make will no longer be required to pay the massive amount.

While New Zealand Electrical Traders [NZET] director Alan Bray is satisfied with the outcome he is frustrated that a number of his questions have been left unanswered.

New Zealand Electrical Traders [NZET] director Alan Bray will not have to pay a $26,000 bill.

'I'm going absolutely nowhere fast with the people I have been dealing with,” says Alan.

'My concern is that I could still be being hacked and I don't know it.”

Last month SunLive reported how Alan received a phone bill for $26,000 for international calls from his system provider Intagr8 Ltd.

It is believed hackers accessed the company's PABX phone system and made more than 1000 international calls over a two day period, for which Alan was charged.

Each phone call lasted anywhere up to 17 minutes and the majority were made to telephone numbers – which now no longer exist – based in the Republic of the Congo.

Two days after going public Alan then received an email from Intagr8 saying the management team had agreed to absorb 100 per cent of the costs 'in this instance only”.

'If the calls were not from our premises then obviously it's not my responsibility to pay,” Alan told SunLive.

'I should never have been billed and should have never woken up to someone threatening legal consequences if I didn't pay the bill.”

The phone bill in question shows on several occasions up to 40 calls were made to the same telephone number simultaneously.

Technicians have since inspected the phone system and established that Alan's current setup of four analogue phone lines made it physically impossible for this to happen.

'Our phone system has no internet connection, we don't use VOIP or Skype and the maximum number of simultaneous calls that we can make is four.”

Alan has asked Intagr8 for more clarification around how the phone charges were generated and why he was billed for them.

Complicating matters is the fact that there are three companies involved – Intagr8, Vodafone and Chorus.

'Intagr8 purchases the phone services they sell from Vodafone, who have purchased the lines from Chorus.

'One of those companies has generated these charges from data they have gathered and that's why I am asking where they have come from, and why was I billed?”

While Alan's wallet has avoided a beating this time, the experience has left him questioning how many other people have been issued similar invoices.

He believes there is sure to be undocumented cases where people have paid for 'hacked calls” in order to avoid legal action.

Alan has since laid a complaint with police over the matter.

In the past six months Intagr8 documented 20 cases of phone hacking and national general manager Stephen Mascarenhas says they have attempted to make phone systems as secure as possible.

The company has employed a full time analyst to analyse data on a daily basis for instances of phone hacking.

"We look for patterns, so if a customer receives a $500 phone bill each month and then there's a spike then we should catch it.

'But there are various methods for hacking and in Mr Bray's case it occurred over a weekend, which complicated matters.

'It's an unfortunate situation for everyone concerned and it is not something we planned for or like either.”

Stephen says they too have approached wholesaler Vodafone for answers as to how Alan's system was hacked and they were still in the process of investigating the matter.

Vodafone is looking into the matter and once they know something then Intagr8 will know, and in turn Alan will know, he says.