SCAM AMAZON PHONE CALL

saxonborg

Full Member

Messages
1,024
Had a phone call from someone with “foreign sounding “ voice advising me that my Amazon Prime account was about to auto renew and if I wanted to cancel it to press “1”. Just so happens I don’t have an Amazon Prime account so I just hung up. Did a quick check on Google and it appears that some people on the Isle of White have had similar calls, so just be wary as I am sure most people are.
 
We had similar calls saying our BT internet was about to be switched off and to press 1 if I wanted to keep it on, we are with VM so obviously a scam but even if we were not it isn't a good idea to press 1 with unsolicited calls
 
I had the same call today but I thought it was a recorded message. I put the phone down before any options were presented but I think £39 was mentioned.
 
So what happens if you press 1 ?
I'll guess that you get to speak with a customer service agent (scammer), who will insist on verifying your identity so that 'they know it's actually you', during which they harvest enough personal information to commit later identity fraud. Either that or (if the call originates from overseas [they can spoof CID info to appear to come from UK]), pressing 1 might connect you an expensive, overseas premium-rate line. Best to just hang up!
 
I just had a phone call on our landline - we don’t use it for calls as we both have mobiles - it was “from Talk Talk” who are going to suspend our internet service, please press 1 or press 2 - what a bunch of Indian 2hats. First of all I’m with Virgin as TT were so incredibly bad as a company to deal with, and secondly I don’t press nowt for no one! It always leaves me wanting to do someone some harm for trying to scam me.
 
Here is the answer but we'll done if you hung up, as soon as you press 1 you start being charged at £25 pounds per minute with a 3 minute minimum. And the bad news, no come back, no refund, i have reported this to the police and British telecom, the people buy this kind of phone number from bt. I am £105 down due to the fact i have a stupid answering machine or should I say I had a stupid answering machine it's not now in use.
 
How does an answer machine press button one?
I've had the same message supposedly from BT a few times. I just hang up.
 
That's why I got rid of this machine, its default reply was to send a message back to the caller stating that I would contact the caller as soon as I was free. Which is the same as pressing button one, or at least this is what I was told from John Lewis which is the company who i used for my phone line at the time, this was about three years ago. The local police office traced the phone number for me and It was found to be a Caymen islands company even though the number was a 11 digit number and looked as if it was English. The outcome was that I had to pay the phone bill because I had not changed the default on the answering machine.
 
[...] The outcome was that I had to pay the phone bill [...]
FWIW, several years ago someone else had a similar problem due to the "press 9" scam that was doing the rounds at the time. The Ofcom website claimed that the most you could be charged for a premium rate call was £1.50 minute, which was contrary to the victim's claims. To cut a long story short, I ended up having a lengthy email conversation with both Ofcom and BT where both were about as evasive as it gets and I had to repeatedly refine my questions to them until they at last admitted that Ofcom did not regulate calls originating overseas and if a call originated from overseas it was possible to incur charges in excess of the Ofcom-claimed maximum by pressing a button on your phone keypad. IMO, the phone company (e.g. BT) should be liable to bear the cost of fraud perpetrated through their medium (in the same way that banks are liable for fraud) where the customer is not at fault. However, judging by the way both BT and Ofcom wriggled when I tried to get confirmation that these scams are possible, you might need to spend disproportionately on legal fees to get redress.
 
You got it, not cost effective to try so I paid up, got rid of my answering machine and changed my supplier.
 
They are just a bit daft! Anyone who has a prime account knows that it is a rolling monthly payment, not yearly! It can be stopped and started whenever you like too.. I love those calls, I feign pannick and go into meltdown for them. I have one of those clickers that were used on D-Day as a communication device, during the meltdown I click it once and go quiet. Then in an "official" voice, inform the caller that I am from the Fraud Office (is there such a thing?) and that they are being tracked. Line usually goes dead at this point.

I know it sounds sad, but I am retired, what else can I do to while away the lonely hours? :)😞🤪
 
They are just a bit daft! Anyone who has a prime account knows that it is a rolling monthly payment, not yearly! It can be stopped and started whenever you like too.. I love those calls, I feign pannick and go into meltdown for them. I have one of those clickers that were used on D-Day as a communication device, during the meltdown I click it once and go quiet. Then in an "official" voice, inform the caller that I am from the Fraud Office (is there such a thing?) and that they are being tracked. Line usually goes dead at this point.

I know it sounds sad, but I am retired, what else can I do to while away the lonely hours? :)😞🤪
When in the mood those calls can be quite fun :) the last one I had telling me I was going to be cut off I totally went into panic mode and just kept asking them how much I could send them to stop it happening. Eventually they realised I was playing them and got angry and said "you are messing with me, aren't you?". Duh!
 
They are just a bit daft! Anyone who has a prime account knows that it is a rolling monthly payment, not yearly! It can be stopped and started whenever you like too.. I love those calls, I feign pannick and go into meltdown for them. I have one of those clickers that were used on D-Day as a communication device, during the meltdown I click it once and go quiet. Then in an "official" voice, inform the caller that I am from the Fraud Office (is there such a thing?) and that they are being tracked. Line usually goes dead at this point.

I know it sounds sad, but I am retired, what else can I do to while away the lonely hours? :)😞🤪
Er... I have a Prime account for which I pay annually every November (currently £79 p.a.) I can stop it any time I want to but it will continue until the next renewal date. I suspect that if I then restart, it will be on the (more expensive) rolling monthly basis.

FWIW, I have a PBX that I've configured to automatically record every call. So, I usually try to get them to identify the true source and ask them where they got my info from before mentioning that the call is being recorded for fraud prevention purposes. At that point, the line usually goes dead. That said, I agree that it can be fun to play with these people if I have the time to spare as any time they waste with me can't be spent scamming someone else!
 
I've had scam calls from 'Amazon Prime, 'BT internet' 'TV licence' and 'accident'. Wonder what they will think up next.
 

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Back
Top