I received a phone call at work today from someone telling me (in a thick foreign accent) that I had won a $25 Wal-Mart giftcard for participating in a survey. He recited my mailing address back to me correctly-- but I couldn't figure out how he would have gotten my work phone. I never give out that info for personal things. The man then preceded to tell me that in order to claim my giftcard I would need to sign up for a trial of a discount card. The discount card would be $1 per month after the trial period. I told the man-- First, I never give out personal info over the phone, and second, I do not sign up for any trial anything if I have to cancel before I start to get charged. The man didn't get why I wouldn't sign up for this amazing discount card to get my "free" money. The entire time, I kept thinking-- this could be a scam.
Have any of you received any fishy phone calls in regards to "winning" something? In this day and age, you can never be too careful with your personal info. I think it's easy to get caught up in the idea of winning something, but if you have to sign up for something else in order to do it, beware!
Posts
4 comments:
I think you handled that very well and it defintely sounded kind of scammish! {if that's a word!}
Oh it definitely sounds like a scam!
I had someone call me once saying they were from my bank. I didn't believe them. So I hung up and called my bank's 1-800 number, and lo and behold it was a scam. They were not running the "promotion" in which this guy wanted me to participate.
Oh yes, that definitely happened to me. They wanted to give me a free subscription to US Weekly (do they know my shopping habits or what) and I talked and talked to them until it finally came out that I was paying for some other subscriptions, etc, etc. What a pain!
(I found your blog from Penny Lane Designs) I think often times they get our info from those grocery store savings cards. That's what I heard when I asked once b/c we are unlisted and we still get phone calls. We got one the other day saying they'd lower our interest rates to 6.5% on all of our cards, so my husband was intrigued and asked if he could look them up on the internet and do a little research (they wanted all of our c/c numbers). The man said, "Sure!" and then hung up. Interesting!!!
What's sad is that there are innocent and sweet Americans that fall for this every day!! It's sad.
I was also pissed the other day when I s/w my cable provider. They called me and I told them I wanted to set up autopay. I wanted to call them back though before giving them my credit card info to be sure it was them. She said there is a fee if we call the company but if the company calls us it's free to take our credit card info over the phone....NOT HELPING!!!!
Post a Comment