BT - scam marketting calls - have you had one ?

[jpaul]

Have you had scam BT marketting telephone calls ?

The full history - Aunt had a landline call from someone trying to sell additional Mobile BT services, she currently has just basic adsl broadband and a telephone line from them.
At her request, they 'authenticated' themselves by providing details from her most recent bill.
She let them continue their marketting spiel for a while, but politely terminated the call saying she did not need these additional services.

We subsequently contacted BT to try and determine if the call was genuine.
BT said they do not make marketting calls, and it was a scam call, this assertion is obviously worrying to her.
BT did not provide a theory on how the caller had access to bill information, or, say what was is the correct way to confirm if a caller is genuinely from BT.

 

[MeEsH BaKkA]

Depends on what details they gave on the bill. Its easy to get enough information from someone to be able to make some assumptions I.e "Hello I'm xxx from BT customer services, I understand you have phone and broadband with us..." your aunt answers yes they can then come up with a rough monthly bill figure, billing dates etc...

 

[peterwalkley]

She can opt out of receiving marketing calls from BT and they will stop fairly quickly. That just leaves the fakes for you to deal with.

 

[lunar]

I had a call last week from a company calling itself BT said that my pc speed was slow and the it had to be restored. I was told to open up my pc and ensure I have Internet access.
I said I would like to call BT to confirm this and requested a name. The caller gave me a manager's name, which no doubt was falsified.
Anyway, he would not take no for an answer so I told him to go f himself. He responded by swearing back at which point I hung up.

 

[Angilion]

I had a call last week from a company calling itself BT said that my pc speed was slow and the it had to be restored. I was told to open up my pc and ensure I have Internet access.
I said I would like to call BT to confirm this and requested a name. The caller gave me a manager's name, which no doubt was falsified.
Anyway, he would not take no for an answer so I told him to go f himself. He responded by swearing back at which point I hung up.

I once had one ring back after I told him I knew it was a scam and hung up. He rung back to ask me how I knew it was a scam. I had a grudging bit of admiration for his chutzpah - ringing a target who'd made him to ask for advice on how to be a better thief. I laughed at him and hung up again.

The most effective approach if you can implement it is to have your phone in a working privacy/security mode where it doesn't ring except for numbers you have marked as being authorised to ring you and everything else goes silently to voicemail. Hardly any scammers leave a message - they just move on to an easier target.

 

[jpaul]

I subsequently looked for online checklists to follow to enable older relatives to verify legitimacy of callers and could not find anything significant,
(albeit) an American site had the following scam I had never seen before

Immediate Questions — A somewhat new scam begins with a call asking, “Can you hear me?” or “Are you the homeowner?” Any question that can elicit a “yes” response can be used in this situation. The purpose of the call is to obtain an affirmative response to the question so that the response can be recorded and used in various ways. In many cases, the scammer already has personal information and desires to have your voice recording to approve changes or credit charges. If you dispute the transaction, the scammer has your recorded “approval.” If someone begins a telephone conversation with a question, hang up or ask questions in response. Do not affirm any information on the telephone unless you are absolutely sure who is calling.

 

[iamdjdz]

I worked (for about 3 weeks) for a call centre cold calling people on BT and other networks to get them to change their line rental back to BT or add extra services. BT basically say that because they own the lines used everywhere and rent them to other companies they can cold call you even if you are on TPS or tell them not to.

 

[edscdk]

cold calling has got so bad now I either hang up without saying anything or if i'm bored / not doing anything waste as much of their time as possible