Warning - New Phone Scam on landline

AuntyJean

I am sure this has been posted somewhere but a quick search did not reveal anything so forgive me if this has been posted before.

Received an email from a colleague as follows.

PLEASE PASS ON TO YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY.

The new telephone 'scam' has arrived as reported by someone:

I received a call from a 'representative' of BT, informing me that he was disconnecting me because of an unpaid bill. He demanded payment immediately of £31.00, or it would be £118.00 to re-connect at a later date.

The guy wasn't even fazed when I told him I was with Virgin Media, allegedly VM have to pay BT a percentage for line rental!

I asked the guy's name - the very 'English' John Peacock with a very 'African' accent - & phone number - 0800 0800 152.

Obviously the fella realized I wasn't believing his story, so offered to demonstrate that he was from BT. I asked how & he told me to hang up & try phoning someone - he would disconnect my phone to prevent this.

AND HE DID!!

My phone was dead - no engaged tone, nothing - until he phoned me again.

Very pleased with himself, he asked if that was enough proof that he was with BT. I asked how the payment was to be made & he said credit card, there & then.

I said that I didn't know how he'd done it, but I had absolutely no intention of paying him, I didn't believe his name or that he worked for BT.

He hung up.

Did 1471 & phoned his fictitious 0800 number - not recognised.

I phoned the police to let them know, I wasn't the first! It's only just started apparently but it is escalating. Their advice was to let as many people know by word of mouth of this scam.

---

This is good but not that clever. He gave the wrong number - it should have been 0800 800152 which takes you through to BT Business.
The cutting off of the line is very simple, he stays on the line with the mute button on and you can't dial out - but he can hear you trying (this is because the person who initiates a call is the one to terminate it). When you stop trying he cuts off and immediately calls back. You could almost be convinced! The sad thing is that it is so simple that it will certainly fool the elderly and vulnerable. Obviously, if this scam is real, once they have your credit/debit card details, there is nothing to stop them cleaning out your account.
The fact that the phone does go off would probably convince some people it's real, so please let as many friends & family aware of this.

Lola23

This has been passed on to me also by a friend.

Quite disturbing.

Thanks for posting it here.

Lola

Farway

This was mentioned on You & Yours on radio 4 some time back, it of course a scam but many have fallen for it unfortunately, including the R4 reporter, so not just elderly & vulnerable

Quentin

Full details here. (Also shows you how to "disconnect" customers yourself if you want to do the scam yourself)

http://www.nidirect.gov.uk/news-september-2009-bt-warns-customers-of-cold-call-scams

Jemma-T

The new telephone 'scam' has arrived as reported by someone:

"Someone"? From outerspace perhaps or maybe a spammer catching all the email addresses. This is not new and you SHOULD NOT pass it on to anyone. I hate these types of posts as you're essentially setting up a nasty chain email to people you know. People can look after themselves and don't need their inbox filled with PLEASE PASS ON TO YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY crap spam from people they know.

BT_company_representative

Hi AuntyJean,

BT have become aware of incidents where customers have been contacted by telephone fraudsters, purporting to be from BT on the pretence of an outstanding bill. The fraudsters then threaten to disconnect the line immediately, if payment is not made straight away.

Whilst BT do have debt handling procedures which may involve calling some customers, BT never carries out disconnections during the call by way of proof.

If you are in any doubt that the call is genuine simply ask for the last four digits of your BT account number, only genuine BT advisors will be able to provide these.

Regards,
Jon.

BT Support.

AuntyJean

Jemma-T wrote: »

"Someone"? From outerspace perhaps or maybe a spammer catching all the email addresses. This is not new and you SHOULD NOT pass it on to anyone. I hate these types of posts as you're essentially setting up a nasty chain email to people you know. People can look after themselves and don't need their inbox filled with PLEASE PASS ON TO YOUR FRIENDS & FAMILY crap spam from people they know.

Hi Jemma, I fully agree that this is the sort of thing we should be suspicious of hence the reason I posted it here AFTER checking the source. I too receive these and 99% of the time ignore them.

By posting it here there is no email address for the spammer to use. On this occasion I felt it was worth passing on. Hope you agree.

Regards

Jean

Ypaymore

AuntyJean wrote: »

a quick search did not reveal anything

How about http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1966219&highlight=phone+scam

Or http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1941055

Various versions of it including one aimed at Sky Customers.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1963041&highlight=sky+scam

AuntyJean

Ypaymore wrote: »

How about http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1966219&highlight=phone+scam

Or http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1941055

Various versions of it including one aimed at Sky Customers.
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1963041&highlight=sky+scam

I did say a quick search, thank you for pointing out these threads.

Jemma-T

Jean, nothing to worry about but this sort of thing just makes people scared (not aware). The fact there's no email involved is neither here or there as you're still scaring people with nasty chain letters.

There's no such thing as a new scam either. These emails are simply nasty email pharming and all the forwarded addresses will be scammed even more or worse still sent off to sites which'll install trojans. Now, that's scary but it only happens when people spam their relatives and friends -or anyone else in their contact list.

MothballsWallet

Jean, also the search function on these forums is a bit, shall we say "hit and miss" when it comes to actually finding things at times. It seems to have got better recently.