Strange Talktalk call/scam

AlbertnFrank

Hi, I'm new to the forum and I'm looking for help/advice, apologies in advance for the essay......

Had a strange experience today, got a call supposedly from talktalk telling me that they were reducing the price of my call/broadband package to £19.50/month for the next 3 months due to covid-19. They went on to tell me that there had been work done at the exchange and I needed a new router, they would organise to send this, but needed a fee to pre-pay the postage to return the old one. They said they couldn't put it through my account, gave me all details of my account including account number and persuaded me to give them a credit card to charge this £3 postage to (I know, I wasn't thinking clearly at the time!).

He then said he would transfer me to the "engineer" who was "configuring" my new router, he transferred my call, the engimeer started talking about the £4 postage fee and there being a problem with my bank.....unbeknown to me someone had tried to take £441.99 from my credit card earlier that day (via a site called world remit) and my bank had already blocked my credit card, hence the  "charge" wouldn't go through, the "engineer" then asked me for a code he was expecting my bank to text me, at this point I put the phone down. 

Spoke to my credit card provider and ensured card was blocked then contacted Talktalk who confirmed it was a scam but were more concerned that they were unable to match the £19.50 for my call/broadband plan.

When I challenged them about the fact that scammers had all personal details including account number they assured me it couldn't have come from them because they wouldn't have needed to call to get card details, they would already have my linked bank details! 

Talktalk put a privacy package on my phone line to block withheld numbers in the future but don't seem that interested, where else can I go with this? I'm concerned there's been a data breach but also how much info the scammers had which enabled them to be extremely convincing and would worry about them trying this with other people?

Still_not_an_expert

Talk Talk has history of customer information being hacked, as them to confirm/deny in writing.
Scammers could have pieced together personal and banking info from other multiple sources. I'd also run a full virus check on your computer. Use free software like Avast or similar. Consider asking for your number to be changed too. 

I am very careful with details, yet my CC number was harvested and used to buy ads on Facebook. 

AlbertnFrank

Thanks for your help, have done a full virus scan and all is well!

Turns out the helpful privacy package talktalk put in place withheld my number but did nothing to incoming calls, so I've removed that! 

I think I'm going to look at logging a formal complaint with them to see if they will actually investigate how the scammers had all my details. Tried to log with action fraud but their website is not very user friendly to say the least......