That happened years ago to me. I got a couple of small orders that didn’t show up on my account but I was billed for them. Amazon wouldn’t give me a refund. Fortunately, it was probably less than $20 and it didn’t happen again. But it was odd.
Gift link of a follow up article in the Washington Post about what the red flags were in the $50K in a shoebox story, and how we can learn from it:
Considering how often posters on CC spend lots of time and energy responding to people who are obviously tr0lls, I can see why people fall for scams.
No question - men get scammed Big Time, and exactly the same way and for the same reasons. In fact, I would hazard that men are more susceptible to scams like this than women, because men are even more likely to hold the false belief that they behave rationally.
Not a true scam but more of a hack/thief- We were on vacation when my husband noticed that we had apparently bought a movie off of Amazon prime. We quickly were able to cancel it and when we got home, my husband checked our credit card that is tied to Amazon. Someone had signed up for a few premium channels and had been watching some of the free shows. We contacted the credit card people and cancelled that card. I then went on to Amazon and put in a parental control for the free content. I never paid much attention to the digital orders (which are separate from the main orders) because it was always just my kindle books. I now watch that much closer. I swear it always happens when we aren’t home too.
That’s a good idea to put on the parental control. I’m going to do that.
The whole story sounded pretty convincing. I hope I would be able to avoid falling for something like this. I guess the thing to keep in mind is that caller ID is easily spoofed so no matter who it “says” is calling it could be a scammer.
We HAVE to answer the phone in our home office since people call us for projects. It’s so frustrating to see something like “CAROL DAVIS” and a local phone number on Caller ID, but when we pick up it’s spam. Our phone will say “SPAM RISK” some times, but it misses a good bit.
Yep, I put the parental control on for all ages. No one is watching my tv without me knowing it, except my kids who know the number
True, and my tech savvy friend knows this. It was really the rest of the set up that drew him in. The spoofed number merely got him to answer the call and he would have hung up if it was a less sophisticated, easily identifiable scam. That’s why I said this was in the “it can happen to anybody” category.
The rule that I give my Dad - If THEY call YOU, just assume it’s scam.
Words to live by.
Always something. My love just logged into Vitamin Shoppe to order supplements as he normally does, put items in the cart, went to check out and, wait what’s this? An address filled in that is in NC…we live in CA. So he changed to our address, reviewed all past orders, nothing that wasn’t his, none shipped to NC. He changed his password, and log in details. But seriously, why would (even a bot) do this? What would the benefit be? To get a batch of supplements and sell them? Weird.
It’s worthwhile checking out that address in NC.
I did - private home, nothing on the web noting issues there, etc.
Could be a software glitch, but your SO did all the right things. He should keep an eye on his other accounts, especially if they have the same login credentials.
I had a scary thing happen last night. My credit union, which has my most used credit card, called about suspicious charges on my card. They were asking about charges on the last card number that I had. I recently had to get a new number because of some suspicious charge.
The number on the caller ID was the same number that I would call on the back of the card. I figured it out and said that the information that they wanted they should already have. Then I hung up and called the credit union. They said that they will never call about a charge. They only text a charge. If it is suspicious, then I or DH have to call the Credit Union. It was really scary. Now, I am scared about any charge. I will never do any banking on my phone, except to see where an ATM is when we are out of town. But, that information is available without me accessing my account.
Wow that is creepy. USAA used to call me all of the time about suspicious charges, but this would have been close to 10 years ago. They would also text and email simultaneously.
I’m glad you figured it out! Do you have notifications set up on your phone so you get a message every time it’s used? I love that feature. Much easier to see if something is amiss. Not everything is instantaneous, but within a few hours. And definitely better than looking at statements once/month in the old days.
Actually now that I think about it, they might not have called. Maybe I’d get floods of texts telling me to call them. It’s been 10 years. Memory isn’t as good lol. I just remember plenty of soccer games on the phone with USAA
There has been an uptick in emails from “XYZ Affiliate.” Like “Costco Affiliate” offering something that sounds almost too good to be true. A veiled attempt to disguise the fact that the email is not coming from ZYZ dot com itself? I delete all of these scams.
On my credit card account there are several notifications that can be set up. I have it configured so I get a text message anytime a charge is made without the card present or over a specified dollar amount. Usually the text arrives within seconds of the card being swiped or of an online purchase.