Since last October there are scam telephone calls with an ‘automated’ recorded message saying your Amazon Prime membership was being automatically renewed and £39 would be debited from your account…
The automated message voice has a female American accent.
The message asks you to press button ‘one’ if you want to question the transaction.
Don’t press any buttons, simply hang up the phone!
If you do press ‘1’ you are put through to a fake Amazon customer service rep who says the non-existent transaction was fraudulent and in order to fix a supposed security flaw you need to grant access to your computer. They instruct you to download Team Viewer and subsequently monitor you logging into your accounts including online banking giving them visibility of all your personal information and bank balances.
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I’m getting ‘Amazon Prime scam called’ around 5 times a week now
I work in a technical support call centre and we decided to cease using teamviewer because of it’s use by scam callers. We informed all our customers of this fact and to treat any calls asking them to use this software to be treated as a fraudulent call.
I’ve been getting Amazon ‘Prime’ scam calls for a number of months, I just hit the BT phone’s call block button, very useful. That said Amazon, BT & other scam calls per week has fallen off a lot since new year, must be a whole week I’ve been scam call free - happy days
The irony is that I have had them about BT landline. If they are automated the phone goes down , if it is from the Microsoft Customer Department with an asian accent saying their name is Roger/George etc I tell them that indeed we have a problem, I am slightly hard of seeing but my wife is dealing and I call her.
About quarter of an hour later I put down the phone…
Hi Debs, it’s an actual button on the BT phone. I just answer the call, scam-man talks, I press the call blocking button, the screen asks are you sure, I press yes, job done, you never see that number again. Problem is the scam scum just use another number.
I pretend to be stupid until it really winds them up, then the continuing irritation in their voice will put off the next person they call as well! Of course by pretending to be stupid it also makes them think they have a really good chance of pulling off their scam - so they emotionally invest in the call. When you tell them you’ve been playing them, they then get even more angry . Their reaction to the revelation can be quite funny .
I’ve had a couple but just put the phone down. Checked my account on the Amazon site and all is in order there.
I suspect that it is a general rule that if anyone calls from what is purported to be a call centre, and asks you to press a key, then it is probably fake. I could be wrong, of course.
I have in the past, when phoned by someone saying that there is a problem with my computer, kept them talking for as long as I can (if I have nothing better to do at the time) on the grounds that if they are fruitlessly talking to me, they won’t be bothering anyone else.
I’ve had some supposedly from BT openreach saying that my broadband is about to be cut off, press something or other so do something about it - needless to say I just hung up. Apart from anything else they are not my broadband provider.
the interesting thing for me on BT, as I work from home it’s paid for by the Company so I know there is no chance of it being cut off
but I too give them the run around and then the phone line goes dead
On occasion i’ve had automated message-calls which require’s a number key to be pushed to hear the message, i don’t like them because they also seem dubious, although can be quite genuine and harmless, last one of these i had was my local bike shop to say a part i ordered was ready to collect.
A couple of weeks ago when i first got the Amazon scam call, i was asleep in bed, i answered the phone thinking it was a message call from Amazon about Prime. It was also a coincidence that a free monthly trial of Prime had recently expired, so i pushed the 1 button which put me though to the ‘fake Amazon account manager’ who went off on the jargon lines of someone has hacked into your Amazon account, but he then addressed me as “Mrs B__” who was the previous occupant of my house and phone number.
That’s not my name, i said.
He asked me for my name but i’d put 2 and 2 together by then.
I asked him if he was a scumbag scammer and he hung up.
I’m still kicking myself for pushing that 1 button, and wonder if i’ve been charged for a premium rate robbery (?)
A friend amuses himself by pressing the 1 key on the Amazon Prime scam calls, then after about 2 or 3 minutes of the ‘spiel’ informs the a*sehole on the other end that the call has been recorded and will be passed to his police force’s fraud squad. Always manages to provoke a rich and colourful reaction!!
It’s really not a good idea to press any numbers, it can instantly inflict your account with a premium cost call charge.
…I just checked my BT on line account but it only show detailed calls & charges up to December .
A couple of years ago i read about a scam call which; if the asked for key number was pressed it instantly gave the account holder a £150 charge on the telephone bill.
It’s astonishing that in this day of age, criminals are allowed to abuse BT telephony so freely to scam people.
. Their reaction to the revelation can be quite funny 
.