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View Full Version : Be alert to this phone scam.



poppett
27-Jan-12, 19:15
Had a call last week from chap speaking excellent english saying he was from Sky protect and my contract which is paid monthly was due to run out at the end of January. Deal he offered was pay 2 years as a lump sum and they would give me 6 months free. I was sure the new box had been installed towards the end of the summer after six months of threatening to leave if Sky didn`t do something about our awful reception which turned out to be a broken cable.

Long story short, after discussion said chap agreed that we had a new contract and would readjust the date, but wanted card details, but agreed a futuristic payment date. Checking credit card bill today the amount agreed plus quite a bit was taken on the day of the phone call.

Card company are being brilliant and are freezing any interest which would be incurred over this payment and they have helped track down the real contact number for the firm who got the money. They have been told in a recorded three party call from the card company that the money has to be repaid within 30 days or they will take further action.

Phoned Sky protect and they say they would never, ever phone a customer about extending a plan and the chap I spoke to there had dealt with 133 people with the same complaint about the same company this week. Watchdog ran a programme about this kind of scam recently and trading standards and the police are aware of this crafty practice.

To be honest, the alarm bells would not have rang with me had they taken the agreed amount, at least not until Sky protect took another monthly payment in February, by which time it would have been too late to do anything about it.

I hope they haven`t caught anyone else out up here.