I hear about a ton of similar-sounding scam calls, where the scammer is pretending to be from a service you use (or used), offering you a substantial monthly discount (30% or more) if you pay some fee ahead of time.
Sometimes they take the advance fee using your credit card, and sometimes they tell you that you have to get store gift cards.
Who would possibly believe that a legitimate vendor would want them to pay with store gift cards? Hundreds of thousands of people. The scammers wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work.
The scammers usually have some information on the victims (e.g., name, address, account number) and in some cases, they can actually make payments to their account, which they can verify on the legitimate vendor’s website, that later on bounces because they used a fraudulent payment method.
I wrote in the past about this type of scam happening to a close friend, branded in his case as originating from T-Mobile and a similar Comcast scam.
Well, I got one myself today and decided to write about it.
I get a handful of unwanted phone calls each day. It’s the majority of my calls almost every day. Like you, I never answer unless I already know the number or have them in my contact list.
In the middle of my busy day, I ended up with a random voicemail (see image below).
A lot of people experiencing similar scams report the scam starting via voicemail and do not remember getting a call that went unanswered and then went to voicemail. Same here. Perhaps the scammers have figured out some way to drop off voicemails to potential victims without ever calling them.
I did some research, and it turns out there are lots of ways to leave someone a voicemail without calling them. Here’s a common way.
I listen to the voicemail.
It was a very pleasant-sounding AI-generated woman who said, “Hello, Comcast/Xfinity calling! You only have minutes left to respond before your 50% discount on your monthly bill is removed. Please call back on the number shown on your caller ID right now to prevent losing this discount. Thank you.”
I am not a Comcast customer (anymore). It’s been 5+ years, but I used to be. So, that’s off. But I suppose the calling entity has an old business list or is just making random calls.
In most of the scams I’ve read about, the scammer has pertinent information on the potential victim (e.g., name, address, account number, current account balance, etc.). Some of that could have been learned from a previous data breach. In this case, perhaps the big 2022 Comcast breach data was used.
This is an example of why every company breach you do business with is a bad thing, even if you didn’t lose any money at the time. Any stolen information about you can be used years later to make a scam seem more realistic.
I’ve also heard of scammers using existing “password dumps” where the user’s logon name and password, along with the affiliated website, were stored. There are tens of billions of people’s logon names and passwords stored in various password dumps around the internet and darknet. Yours probably is.
Check out Troy Hunt’s HaveIBeenPwned site to see if your logons have been stolen in the past.
I’ve heard of current account balance information that can be learned by anyone with a bare amount of information on someone, like their name and zip code. They can also make (fraudulent) payments using the same methods.
Just because someone is repeating non-public details about your life to you doesn’t mean they aren’t a scammer.
I loved the automated scammer message that couldn’t even tell me what number to call back. I was supposed to just look at the caller ID to get the number. Yeah, that sounds legit! Has a legitimate caller ever not repeated the number you needed to call? Nope.
They pressured me twice to call back ASAP!
I know it’s a scam, but I decided to research more.
The phone number I was supposed to call is 267-239-9699.
The 267 area code ties to Pennsylvania.
The 239 local exchange ties to Philadelphia.
When I look up the entire number, it comes back to Comcast Phone of Pennsylvania, LLC – Pa (see image below).
That’s pretty tricky. It explains why many scam victims report the CALLER ID feature of their phone stating COMCAST or something like that.
But it isn’t Comcast. It’s just some text the scammer put in for the business name when registering the phone number.
When I look up the Comcast Phone of Pennsylvania, it does not come up on the internet. It does not come up on the Better Business Bureau site (bbb.org). See image below.
Yeah, that’s not going to happen with a legitimate company.
I Called
I decided to call the scam phone number. I didn’t want to use my real phone or phone number. There are dozens of ways to make a call over the internet. Just search for ‘make a phone call from the internet.’ I used https://call2friends.com/free-calls.
The call rang busy and was never picked up. Perhaps it was always busy with other potential victims, already closed by the authorities, or it doesn’t pick up when free service VPN phone numbers are used to call it.
So, I didn’t get a chance to enjoy the fake call hold muzak and announcements. Victims report very realistic-sounding call centers and announcements.
If I got through, typically, I would get to a high-pressure salesperson who is going to tell me about this new, great sales promotion that will save me a ton of money over the long run. They will ask your name and then tell you information about you (including account information and address). They will ask you for a $200 fee or something like that so you can be enrolled in the program and “lock in” the new discounted rate.
Calling Legitimate Comcast
Sadly, when I tried to call the real Comcast using a phone number from their legitimate site, I just ran into lots of frustration. First, it seems every vendor wants to hide any phone numbers that could get you to a real human being, as it is the most expensive and rare thing on Earth. I couldn’t easily find a legitimate phone number.
It offered me an AI bot, which was useless. It offered me Facebook Messenger, which gave me an auto reply, and then never came back. It gave me several text message numbers to try, none of which resulted in being able to get help.
I finally did an internet search on ‘Comcast tech support numbers’ and got to https://www.xfinity.com/support/contact-us. That’s very legit. But none of the options were even close to being right for my particular need.
I looked up (on comcast.com) and called Comcast Customer Security Assurance (844-335-8719) to inquire about the likely scam number. The agent answering said that the 267 number was guaranteed to be a fraud, because Comcast only called on 888 numbers.
I laughed a little bit because Comcast uses 800 numbers as well, and the number I was currently calling was 844. Oh, well.
I think most marketing and sales calls do originate from an 888 or 800 number. A 267 area code is definitely phishy.
Searches on Comcast’s own website resulted in zero results about this particular scam, although it did show me dozens of links about generic scams that did not apply to my scenario. It’s literally the most common Comcast scam in the world, and their website does not have easy-to-find information about it.
Well, without calling, I already know this was a scam, but why do vendors make it so hard to get basic help and questions answered?
Documented cases
Searching on the larger internet I came across a ton of previously documented and shared scam cases with similar details.
Here are some of them:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/the-xfinity-imposter-scam-is-back-with-a-twist-060425.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scams/comments/1jtxmdg/i_just_got_a_call_from_comcast_xfinity_saying/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjqiMA372qw
Lessons Learned
- Any unexpected message (no matter how delivered) asking you to do something weird or new should result in you being very, very skeptical. These types of communications are high risk.
- When in doubt, TRY to reach out to the legitimate vendor to confirm before performing the requested actions.
- Just because a caller has some details on you doesn’t mean they aren’t a scammer.
- You can’t trust the CALLER ID feature.
These types of scams are super common, so share this post far and wide with co-workers, friends and family.
