Warning: BT Phone Scam

angelavdavis

I wanted to share with all on here the experience we had this evening.

At 18:41 this evening, our phone went and a caller, claiming to be from BT said that our direct debit had been refused from the bank and as a result of us being behind with our payments, they would be cutting our phone off by 19:00 (incurring a reconnection fee of £75) unless we settled the arrears of £18 immediately.

My husband challenged him - how do I know you are from BT, why are you phoning now and not during the day when you are cutting us off, etc. The answers were he a) gave a name Paul Brown and b) said we were lucky he didn't phone us at 18:55!

Luckily, because OH answered and doesn't do the finances, he said he would have to check with me first to find out what had happened and asked for a number to call back on. The guy said he would phone back in ten minutes. I was at my inlaws house, so OH phoned me on mobi.

Well, obviously I was surprised to hear this as I hadn't received any correspondence about the problem and hadn't noticed a missing dd and certainly hadn't cancelled the dd. So, I phoned the bank and queried the direct debits which, although BT appears to have had some sort of mixup in May (caused I suspect by the bank holiday), they had taken last months and this months - therefore we were up to date. I took the references and phoned OH back to let him know.

In the meantime, the guy had phoned back, but this time, my mother had answered it. He asked who she was, then my mother said "who are you?" and the phone went dead.

OH then called BT to check what was happening and sure enough - we were up to date, no one had heard of Paul Brown in the customer service office and it appears to be a scam. We reported the details to BT but I wanted to warn people on here that someone is trying to scam people.

twentypenceoff

how would a scam artist know you paid by dd? i pay my phone bill in full when i get it?

Pixulated

twentypenceoff wrote: »

how would a scam artist know you paid by dd? i pay my phone bill in full when i get it?

People can get any kind of information these days from anything.

Nothing is secure which is why I do all my banking online.

Just think anyone could of get a slip of bank statement or anything.

Heinz

If you think about it, this is just the verbal version of phishing. Use the phone book and pick a number. Chances are the subscriber (who's name and address you now know) has a BT line and pays by DD. If the line's not with BT or DD is not the payment method, hang up and try another.

It's a widespread scam - HERE is an example from April.

Devon & Cornwall Constabulary even issued a warning - see HERE.

macman

twentypenceoff wrote: »

how would a scam artist know you paid by dd? i pay my phone bill in full when i get it?

They wouldn't know. But most people do, so they'll initially use that approach to try and work this scam.

angelavdavis

Heinz wrote: »

If you think about it, this is just the verbal version of phishing. Use the phone book and pick a number. Chances are the subscriber (who's name and address you now know) has a BT line and pays by DD. If the line's not with BT or DD is not the payment method, hang up and try another.

It's a widespread scam - HERE is an example from April.

Devon & Cornwall Constabulary even issued a warning - see HERE.

Thanks for this, I have forwarded to the Local Community Policing Unit for their information so they can release a press release to the local paper.

1984ReturnsForReal_2

twentypenceoff wrote: »

how would a scam artist know you paid by dd? i pay my phone bill in full when i get it?

They same way one knew my account number.

From inside BT!!

TheBlonde

I've just had one of these calls, luckily I thought it all sounded a bit odd and they were calling from a withheld number

hayley11

This was mentioned in a newsletter I got at CAB today. Apparantly there's a couple of scams like this like this going around.

This is why I never ever give information out over the phone to anybody. I always ring them back on a number I find, not one they give me.

staffie1

Good for you those people who spotted it was a scam and refused to give out personal information over the phone. However there will be, I fear, many people not so clued up who will fall for it and blurt out whatever information is asked of them. These scam artists are scumbags.