Scam offers Spectrum customers money off cable bill
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – Scammers are going after customers of a cable company that serves millions of Ohioans. Now the company and consumer advocates are warning customers to be aware.
Michael Sparks, a retired engineer in Chillicothe, considers himself an informed consumer.
“I get five to six scam calls a day,” Sparks said. “I don’t answer any phone numbers unless I know them.”
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One of the calls Sparks received Tuesday was different. This time, the caller left a voicemail.
“I received a phone call yesterday from Spectrum– automated phone call using their normal Spectrum automated voice and everything to call them back at an 800-number and offering me a 50% off my normal cable bill,” Sparks said.
He called the number and spoke with someone claiming to work for Spectrum.
“They said the only caveat was to pay the first nine months in advance, and at the new rate 50% off,” Sparks said. “And as a special promotion, they would send me a $400 gift card as a thank you.”
Sparks admits he almost fell for the con.
“They told me what my account number was, what my balance was, my credit card– last four (digits of) my credit card (number) and my address,” Sparks said. “At that point, they zeroed out my balance, and I was logged into my normal Spectrum account. And I saw where it went– the balance went from $189 to zero. So I was pretty sure this was Spectrum.”
He realized what was going on when he was given instructions to pay for several months of service upfront.
“The way they wanted you to pay it was you would go by three Target cards with a total of $855 on them, and then you call this other 800-number,” Sparks said. “Now I’m starting to think this is a scam because this is the M.O. of scammers– using gift cards.”
“Gift card is the preferred method of getting cash from consumers,” said Lee Anne Lanigan, Director of Customer Relations and Investigations for central Ohio’s Better Business Bureau. “They can take the money off the card and there’s no ramifications to them. They’re not going to have to give it back, nobody’s going to track them down, nobody’s going to jail.”
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According to Lanigan, the BBB has in recent months received a “spike” in similar reports from Spectrum customers. However, Sparks’s case is the first she heard in which the scammer pretended to “zero-out” the customer’s Spectrum account balance. She likened that to a scammer giving their mark a fake check to deposit, leading to what she described as a “world of misery” for the victim when the check inevitably bounces.
“If they pay your Spectrum bill, they’ve not really paid your Spectrum bill,” Lanigan said. “They probably just deposited money into an account and clawed it back out.”
Spectrum is aware of the issue, and posted a warning to customers about the scam on their website. “We will never offer a discounted rate for a fee,” the warning said.
Whether a caller says they’re your cable company, credit card company, the IRS, or any other entity asking for money, Lanigan recommends ending the call, searching for the entity’s customer service number at bbb.org, and verifying whether you owe money.
Lanigan said scammers know how likely consumers are to search for a phone number on Google, so there’s a chance of coming across a fake number posted by yet another con artist.
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