Old Mrs. Buzz misdialed the customer service number on our HSA credit card, and got connected w/ a foreign sounding scam company stating that bank number she was trying to call had temporary technical issues and they would connect her, but for the inconvenience they were gonna give her a $100 shopping reward. So she gave them all her info, including name, address, credit card number, expiration date, security code, etc. to cover $2.95 handling fee. Brilliant. Then when they told her she had 14 days to cancel, or she would be charged $20/month for ongoing discount privileges at stores she rarely frequents, she started catching on. Even though I was yelling "get off the phone, it's a scam!" from the beginning, she kept at it until she finally realized she didn't want to get hit w/ $20/mo. kicker... as if she would be lucky enough that's all it would be. Another two hours spent trying to cancel the HSA credit card and get another reissued.
A quick googling showed me at least three other bank numbers that were close to the scammer's one listed in the subject line, so I'm gonna assume there are probably more. Our HSA bank's number that she thought was dialing was one digit off. No telling how bad the identity theft is really gonna be at this point.
I called back, and the guy kept pushing for more info, and I kept asking him to simply confirm what bank he was from because I said I was having an issue w/ my credit card, and had called the customer service number. While we were jousting, another call came in w/ no caller ID, and it was a Windows scammer asking specifically for Mrs. Buzz by name. The number I was calling from was one of our oldest numbers, from over 40 years ago, that has been ported to a cheapo cell package for years, but it's a number that has been associated w/ medical stuff and other things, and was published in the phone book for decades when there was such a thing, so it's likely a scammer rooting around w/ the info Mrs. Buzz gave out, that they would find that number.
Windows scammer was insistent on talking to Mrs. Buzz when I told him he couldn't access our computer. He insisted Mrs. Buzz bought a $340 three-year service contract a couple of months ago. Of course he didn't know what type of computer, or what version of Windows was supposedly involved, or how many Windoze computers were on the network.
Hope y'all's weekends have been at least this much fun.
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