The phone rang this morning, my wife picked it up. The caller ID said, Comcast. We screen calls with the caller ID, but since we are Comcast customers, we reasonably figured it was legit. Mrs. Merkt doesn't suffer fools gladly so she quickly handed the call off to me. The caller was south Asian-sounding, which in itself isn't unusual. Seeing as how so many call centers have been off-shored to places like that. He gave me a pitch as to how Comcast was offering a special promotion and they would give me my existing bundled service that we have for $130 per month for two years. Of course that got my interest because we pay more than that now. The little voice in the back of my head is saying, "Why would Comcast call and voluntarily give up money?" Quite the opposite, I've had to call them I don't know how many times to haggle over our bill when they've arbitrarily jacked my rates.
When the caller tells me $130, right away I asked him, "Taxes included?" Which has gotten to be a significant laundry list of add-ons. So this far along, I bite and tell him I'm interested. He then gives me a Comcast promotion code which is a long box-car number sequence. He also gave me the phone number for the Comcast billing department where I could set up my this new billing amount for my account.
Next phase, the caller tells me this promotion is being sponsored by Ebay and that is the basis for the discount. To get the promotion, I need to pre-pay my first two months of service under the new rates. He carefully explains to me that to do the pre-payment of two months, I need to go to (list of stores in our area), and buy an Ebay card (gift card) for $260 and I will use this to pay when I call in to the Comcast billing department to activate the new rates. He explains that this is part of the Ebay promotion. Well, this sounded somewhat weird but I thought, "Who knows, maybe there is some kind of tie-in between the two companies." Oh, he also said that if I bought my Ebay card and called in to the Comcast billing department today before 10:00PM, they would give me a free $100 prepaid Mastercard.
This caller already knew my name and address. Obviously also my phone number.
When I got off the phone, I went straight over to my PC and Googled this situation and right away, it came up bogus. The scam is, you buy the Ebay gift card, call the (bogus) Comcast billing department, they have you give them the gift card number and pin number. Which they then use to cash it electronically. You never hear from them again, your Comcast rates stay the same, it has nothing to do with the real Comcast. Three things stick out in my mind.
1. Somehow, these crooks knew I was a Comcast customer. I'd like to know how that happens. Comcast has tens of thousands of people working for the company, I suppose there are some there who will steal data. Or their records have been hacked.
2. How can someone calling sit there for 15 minutes and every word out of their mouth is a lie? What kind of people take a job like that? I could hear other people talking in the background, boiler-room style, the crook was not working solo. There's a room full of jerks telling lies. I wonder if their mother knows how they earn a living. A Highway 99 hooker makes a more honest living than that.
3. The flagrant display and use of the Comcast brand should be disturbing to the company but I doubt their ability to do anything about it. I guess I shouldn't feel too badly for Comcast; there are those who believe that organization is a legal form of organized crime.
So when I Googled this, some people have been stung. They went the full distance, bought the card and called the numbers in. What they have left to show for it is a zero balance Ebay card. This next part was funny, some people went along as far as I did. Even after they looked it up and found out it was bogus, they called Comcast and demanded reduced rates!
When the caller tells me $130, right away I asked him, "Taxes included?" Which has gotten to be a significant laundry list of add-ons. So this far along, I bite and tell him I'm interested. He then gives me a Comcast promotion code which is a long box-car number sequence. He also gave me the phone number for the Comcast billing department where I could set up my this new billing amount for my account.
Next phase, the caller tells me this promotion is being sponsored by Ebay and that is the basis for the discount. To get the promotion, I need to pre-pay my first two months of service under the new rates. He carefully explains to me that to do the pre-payment of two months, I need to go to (list of stores in our area), and buy an Ebay card (gift card) for $260 and I will use this to pay when I call in to the Comcast billing department to activate the new rates. He explains that this is part of the Ebay promotion. Well, this sounded somewhat weird but I thought, "Who knows, maybe there is some kind of tie-in between the two companies." Oh, he also said that if I bought my Ebay card and called in to the Comcast billing department today before 10:00PM, they would give me a free $100 prepaid Mastercard.
This caller already knew my name and address. Obviously also my phone number.
When I got off the phone, I went straight over to my PC and Googled this situation and right away, it came up bogus. The scam is, you buy the Ebay gift card, call the (bogus) Comcast billing department, they have you give them the gift card number and pin number. Which they then use to cash it electronically. You never hear from them again, your Comcast rates stay the same, it has nothing to do with the real Comcast. Three things stick out in my mind.
1. Somehow, these crooks knew I was a Comcast customer. I'd like to know how that happens. Comcast has tens of thousands of people working for the company, I suppose there are some there who will steal data. Or their records have been hacked.
2. How can someone calling sit there for 15 minutes and every word out of their mouth is a lie? What kind of people take a job like that? I could hear other people talking in the background, boiler-room style, the crook was not working solo. There's a room full of jerks telling lies. I wonder if their mother knows how they earn a living. A Highway 99 hooker makes a more honest living than that.
3. The flagrant display and use of the Comcast brand should be disturbing to the company but I doubt their ability to do anything about it. I guess I shouldn't feel too badly for Comcast; there are those who believe that organization is a legal form of organized crime.
So when I Googled this, some people have been stung. They went the full distance, bought the card and called the numbers in. What they have left to show for it is a zero balance Ebay card. This next part was funny, some people went along as far as I did. Even after they looked it up and found out it was bogus, they called Comcast and demanded reduced rates!
