How to Spot the Pay Per Call Telephone Scam. The pay per call telephone scam is a scam that takes advantage of the consumer's worry for their relatives or financial or legal security. When scammers lure consumers to call the number, consumers are connected to an overseas number and overcharged for the call. Read the following tips to learn how to spot the pay per call telephone scam.
Step 1
Receive a seemingly urgent message on your answering machine, voicemail or in your email inbox. The message will likely claim that a family member is in trouble or legal action is about to be taken against you. Final notices about overdue accounts or prizes may also be used to get your attention.
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Step 2
Find a number on the message to call.
Step 3
Call the number. Listen to a long or slow recorded message that may employ complicated phone trees. At the end of the phone tree, be connected to a live person.
Step 4
Listen to the person speak. The person on the other line will likely affect a hard-to-understand accent, claim to misunderstand you many times, pretend to look up an account, put you on hold or act confused by your questions. The scammer will try to keep you on the line as long as he possibly can.
Step 5
Be charged a large amount of money per minute while you stay on the line and attempt to figure out why the scammer left the urgent message. Scammers have been reported to charge $25 for every minute that a caller stays on the line.
Step 6
Get your phone bill and discover the charges. Pay per call numbers that connect to lines overseas are not regulated by United States laws, so attempting to recover the lost money will be difficult.
Tip
Some scammers put job ads in newspapers that link to a pay-per-call area code. However, the number listed will be local.
Warning
Because the number connects to an overseas number, the scammers do not have to warn you about incurring charges.
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