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  The "Call Me Back" Scam

This is a scam that relies on your employees attempts to provide good service resulting is hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars worth of telephone service billing.

Here's How it Works

Some one calls your company regarding one of your products and request a return phone call.  An employee returns the call in an effort to assist this customer.   When the call is placed someone will answer and make every attempt to retain the caller on the line.  This attempt to keep the caller from hanging up may include pretending not to understand what the caller is looking for due to not understanding English well or perhaps suggesting that they are trying to locate the person the caller is looking for.  In the end, the results are always the same.  Every attempt is made to keep the caller on line for as long as possible.

What is really going on is that your employee is calling a number outside the United States.   You are actually calling a service similar to a 900 service where the call is billed back to you sometimes at hundreds of U.S. dollars per minute.

A variant on this scam works by leaving call back numbers on pagers or cell phones.   The unwitting caller is then stuck with the billing.

How to Protect Your Business

Since calls to these numbers appear to be calls to any other area code in the U.S. it may be somewhat tougher to educate your users against this type of fraud.   However you should make certain that you have explained it to them.  In this case it is far better to have your telephone system vendor to block calls to these area codes.

What to do