by Eleanor Wright for work-at-home.org
You check your voicemail box or answering machine and there’s a message from a young woman asking you to call her back right away. She may say she’s with a doctor’s office, is offering you a job, or informing you that you’ve won a prize, or has some other urgent business with you. You call her back, even if only to find out who she is, and whammo – there’s a $2425 charge on your phone bill the next month. If you can’t pay it, you may lose your phone service and suffer damaged credit.
The email is also very prevalent in spam mail.
Scam Protection: Don’t return phone calls if you don’t know who called you in the first place.
AT&T offers the following information and tips:
• Return calls to familiar numbers only. As a general rule, return calls from numbers that contain familiar or recognizable area codes. You may call your directory assistance or long distance operator to check the area code location.
• Carefully read your telephone bill. Make sure that you only receive charges from your provider of choice. Ensure you thoroughly understand charges listed on your phone bill, have chosen to do business with all of the listed providers billing for those charges and have authorized additional fees invoiced. If your local service provider has changed, you will receive a final bill from the former provider and a notice of service disconnection.
If you believe that you have been scammed:
• Contact the carrier with whom the charge originated, whose name and toll-free telephone number should be printed on the same bill page as the charge in question. Often, the problem can be resolved with a single phone call.
• If the carrier with whom the charge originated does not agree to resolve the problem, contact AT&T. AT&T will work with you and the carrier to help remove fraudulent charges from the phone bill.
You can also find more phone security tips and scam notices from AT&T at http://www.att.com/gen/press-room?pid=6045
More information also available from the Federal Communications Commission.
Report work at home scams to us here at Work-at-Home.org!
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