Amdins and Mods, Not sure if its in the right place but.
Don’t be caught out!
Picture the scene:- You are sitting at home and there is a knock at the door. On answering it you are confronted by a respectable looking woman in a suit, who is slightly distressed. She explains that her car has broken down further down the road and she needs to contact her husband to come to her aid. It is at all possible to use your phone to call him?
You allow her to use the phone, but being the suspicious type you stand with her as she makes the call. She dials the number, and asks to be put through to Mr Smith/Brown/Stevens (whatever).
She holds the line for thirty seconds. She continues “in that case can you ask him to leave the meeting for a minute I need to speak to him quite urgently.” She apologies again and explains they are getting him out of a meeting. A couple of minutes goes by and she starts to speak to her husband.
She explains the situation to him, tells him what has happened to the car, is annoyed because she now can’t get to her meeting, and asks what she should do now. She listens for a few seconds and then says, “Well as soon as the meeting finishes can you come to Cardiff Road / Leicester Road / Surry Street (Whatever), where the car has broken down.
Another few seconds go by, “OK, I’ll see you in about twenty minutes then” She puts the phone down, and thanks you ever so much for your kind assistance, even offering you a pound for your trouble, but of course you decline, it’s no trouble.
She leaves and everything is fine. Or is it?
The day or week before knocking on your door she set up her own premium rate line with a telephone company at the cost of about £150, and she has dictated the calls to that number be charged £50 per minute. She has dialled that number. The conversation she has had with her “husband” is entirely fictitious, there is a pre-recorded voice message on the other end to give you impression she is talking to someone. She has been on the phone for about 5 minutes, that call just cost you £250, the majority if which goes into her pocket, and the first you know about it is when you get your bill a month later.
To rub a bit of salt into the wound, she hasn’t even committed a criminal offence. You’ve given her permission to use your phone.
There has been 5 occasions in Luton where this has been reported in the last couple of weeks. And spreading.
After researching this scam a bit more, I found this:
Undoubtedly, they can't scam you for too much money within a five-minute timeframe. Furthermore, if you sent a complaint to the phone service that is allowing them to do this, they should supsend or terminate their account to mantain their own reputation.
