SOUTHAVEN, Miss. (WMC) - A warning concerning all those unsolicited offers to upgrade your phone or cell service to save money: A Southaven mom says she took the bait and got charged thousands - and she’s not the only one.
It wasn’t the birthday gift Amma Harris hoped for.
“It was around my birthday, so I was very upset,” said Harris.
She got a cellphone bill totaling almost $2,000 and just days before Christmas.
“Thinking I had to pay out of pocket $2,000 and that’s going to take a lot of Christmas gift money,” said Harris.
Her saga started when her husband took a random call from what he thought was AT&T, offering a discounted phone plan and upgrade.
Amma said she joined the call on three-way.
“Jason was the person I was speaking to in their promotional department, he said,” said Harris.
“Jason” told the Harrises they’d been overpaying on their family plan. There were 8 lines attached to 6 cell phones, a watch and iPad.
Her typical bill was around $500 a month. Jason said he’d lower that and send her a new iPhone.
“I was going to use it to give it to one of the kids. Like, okay I have a phone. I can give them this. Could have been a great present,” said Harris.
Jason said he would send Amma a digital gift card to essentially pay for the new phone.
“I think it didn’t register with me because AT&T has given me gift cards and they’re VISA gift cards...you know what I’m saying? So, they’re kind of mimicking everything,” Harris said.
“Like, if you sign on for 12 months, you’ll get a $200 VISA gift card.”
Amma says Jason drug things out, placing her on hold, claiming there was a block on her AT&T account and that he needed her to give him access. Once she gave him that information, she got a confirmation email with what appeared to be an AT&T logo and agent ID.
"ATT@billingpromotions.com," Harris said, showing us the email she received. She thought it was real.
“The phone was shipped to my house the next morning around like 4-5 in the morning. UPS drops off a package. Before I got the package they said, ‘call and let us know when you get the package, we’ll activate the phone.’ Still seems legit,” said Harris.
That is until she called to let Jason know the package had arrived.
“They tell me this particular phone I have received is not a promotional phone and they have specific phones for specific things and inventories,” said Harris.
Jason told her to send the phone to a specific address, and he’d send her another one. So she did.
“They proceed to tell me, ‘Let’s start the process again.’ and I’m like, ‘I can just go in the store. I have your emails and things’ ...They said ‘no, it has to be done here.’ At that point I hung up the phone and called directly to AT&T,” said Harris.
You guessed it. Amma had been scammed. She was on the hook for a new phone - that she had now shipped off to complete strangers!
“Any kind of unsolicited offer, you have to think twice about and vet to the best of your ability,” said Daniel Iriwn.
Daniel Irwin with the Mid-South Better Business Bureau says his office has seen a spike in reports concerning suspicious offers from unsolicited callers claiming to be with AT&T and other wireless providers, with 34 incidents reported over the past 18 months, 44% of those just since October.
“You always wonder well, how’d they get my phone number in the first place? How do they know I was a customer of this company? Well they know this because of data breaches,” said Harris.
The Harrises have been with AT&T for at least 10 years.
An AT&T rep told the Impact Team: “This customer was a victim of a sophisticated scam. Customers should remain vigilant, never share account information, and never authorize people they don’t know to access their accounts.”
“My advice is go to the store. Handle everything in the store,” said Harris. “Make sure you have those locks on your accounts; passwords change them often.”
Amma got that $2,000 charge removed from her bill, but she still wonders who got that brand new iPhone.
“They sounded like they were in a warehouse or call center. There were other people I could hear. So, I hope they’re caught and get jail time for scamming people,” said Harris.
I tried calling Jason myself, but his new phone must have come with a new number. The recording on his phone had an automated message about booking a dream vacation.
Our consumer experts shared a slew of security tips for calls just like the one the Harrises got.
Discounted Internet or Streaming Scam by Jacob Gallant
Here’s how to report a scam to the BBB here:
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