At 7:30 this morning my phone rang. A very pleasant recorded voice informed me that my Amazon Prime account would be auto-renewed with a charge of three nine point nine nine on my credit card. That’s what he said. Three nine point nine nine. Very specific. And pretty weird. Didn’t seem like a scam at all.
To top it off, I don’t have an Amazon account of any type, prime or otherwise. But that wasn’t the only call I’ve gotten this week. Or email.
In some ways, it’d nice to know these people have gone back to being ungainfully employed. The pandemic seemed to hit the scam business pretty hard. Phone calls dropped off dramatically. And I hardly saw any emails. But they seem to be coming back.
The auto-renewal thing seems to be pretty popular. I got several emails telling me something, I’m not sure what because they were a bit vague on that part, but whatever it was would be auto-renewed for whatever price with charges appearing on my credit card unless I got in touch and stopped it. Which is, of course, exactly what they want.
I also received a notice of a document I was supposed to sign. Sorry. But if you are waiting for me to sign something, you best give me a heads up that you are sending it, or I’m just hitting delete.
Amazon seems to be pretty popular this time of year. At least with scammers. My mother has gotten several calls this week telling her that her Amazon shipments are being held at the border unless she contacts them. My mother is in her 90’s, has never used a computer in her life, can’t hear very well and has little patience for any phone call if she doesn’t recognize the number. Usually, she just hangs up. Some times she may tell them what she thinks of them. Almost makes me feel bad for them. Almost.
But it really is annoying. And it’s hard to believe there isn’t some way to stop it. I know most of them are set up in other countries. They must not make phone calls and send emails within those countries, or they would become annoying enough for local police to arrest.
But it seems to be the season. Be careful what you click on and what appears on your phone. I know there are supposed to be new things coming along to limit the calls, but they’ll probably just find a way around it.
The scammers seem to be coming back in force, which I guess is a good sign we are coming out of the pandemic. Not even Omicron or any of his Decepticon buddies seem to be holding them back.
Although I am a bit concerned about the Captain. I haven’t heard him blowing his ship’s horn in my ear for a couple years now. I know the pandemic hit the cruise industry pretty hard, so I hope he didn’t lose his job. Although I suspect he has a new position at Amazon.
