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A group misrepresenting itself as part of Comcast is offering customers substantial discounts on cable and broadband service, if they agree to pay in advance. Customers accepting the offer don’t get any upgrades and lose their money.
Stop the Cap! reader Don Nelson alerted us that a group calling itself the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” has called residents in Comcast service areas offering huge discounts and upgrades on cable and Internet service for as little as $80 a month.
Nelson was offered Extreme 105 Internet, HD Premier with an X1 set-top box, Unlimited Phone, and HBO, Starz, Showtime & Cinemax for $79.99 for 24 months if he agreed to pay $239.97 to cover the first three months of the promotion in advance. If he was willing to prepay for six months, Nelson would also receive a free Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 tablet as a gift. It sounded like a great deal. Comcast’s own website sells the same package for $159.99 a month for 24 months with a two-year contract.
“It’s a very slick operation and they have your personal information and exactly what services you receive from Comcast, so I strongly suspect Comcast’s systems have been breached or some of their employees are involved in the scam,” Nelson said.
When he told the representative it sounded like a deal too good to be true, Nelson was reassured he was speaking with Comcast by telling him his account number and current level of service, including the number and types of set-top boxes already in his home. They knew his street address and had two phone numbers on file, a fact that now bothers Nelson because one of them was an old throwaway prepaid cell phone number he gave Comcast five years ago when he signed up to avoid future telemarketing calls.
“Only four companies had that phone number, including Comcast, and now so do these guys,” Nelson told us. “Something is wrong at Comcast for these scammers to have this information.”
As an extra assurance of good faith, the Indian-accented representative invited Nelson to call him back at 866-694-8573 — the same number displayed on Nelson’s Caller ID.
“Most of these scammers go fishing for your personal information, but the person I talked to didn’t ask me any personal details at all because he already had them,” Nelson said. “When I called back, the interactive system that answered sounded professional and authentic, with options to make a payment and report service problems.”
What started to raise Nelson’s suspicion was exactly how the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” expected to be paid.
Nelson was told he shouldn’t visit Comcast to make a payment, read his credit card number over the phone, or send a check in the mail. Instead, he was asked to acquire a Green Dot MoneyPak “Scratchable Prepaid Card” at his local CVS, Walgreens, or Kmart and load it with the expected pre-payment. Instead of mailing that card to the “Loyalty Department,” he was supposed to call back and read the numbers off the back of the Green Dot card.
“I was assured everything was okay and this was a co-promotion between Green Dot and Comcast that covered part of the cost of the cable deal I was getting,” Nelson said. “But that sounded strange and I requested an email confirmation to make sure I understood the offer.”
The “Loyalty Department” did, in fact, send an email “verification,” which only further raised suspicion because of its word choices and lack of familiarity with common colloquial expressions. The grammatical errors did not inspire confidence either:
No legitimate company will tell you to buy a prepaid card to make a payment. Scammers cannot afford to accept standard credit cards that can and will be traced back to them eventually.
Dear Customer,
Good Day!
This email refers to the promotion on your current/new services with Comcast Xfinity, this promotion offers you free upgrades in your existing (new services)services of Comcast.
With this up gradation you will be having i.e.
i) Up to 105Mbps download speed. This package gives you liberty to enjoy unlimited uploading and downloading with no fair usage policy applicable.
ii) The upgraded cable package will be Digital HD Premier Package with 260 digital channels with 40 premium movies and 25 sports packages.
iii) The upgraded Comcast voice package will give you unlimited Nationwide and North American talk and text.
A quick review of the available programming is mentioned below:
FAMILY CHANNEL:
ABC Family, Bloomberg TV, A&E, Cartoon network, Disney, Bravo, E! etc.
MOVIE CHANNEL:
Action Max, AMC, HBO, CINEMAX, STARZ, SHOWTIME, HALLMARK, ENCORE etc.
SPORT CHANNEL:
Big Ten Network, CBS College Sports, ESPN, Fox Soccer Channel, NFL, NHL, NBA etc
NEWS CHANNEL:
ABC News, Weather, BBC, C SPAN, CNBC, FOX NEWS etc.Green Dot offers this fraud advisory.
Payment Procedure:
This promotion is applicable once you prepay your account for $239.97 (good for 03 months).
As this promotion is brought to you with the Co-operation of Green Dot Inc.
So you have to pay Comcast for the promotion with Money Pak billing card by following 3 simple steps:
i) Go to any of your favorite leading chain store’s checkout counter e.g. CVS Pharmacy, Kroger, Walgreens’ 7/11, Kmart, Circle K, Rite Aid, RadioShack etc, and get Green Dot Money Pak Scratch-able prepaid card (This is a hard paper twofold card without any plastic wrapping in the color green)
ii) Carry enough cash. You can’t use your debit or credit card to buy this Card. ($4.95 Service fee applicable on top of your billing)
iii) Call back the Billing department of Comcast Xfinity at 1-866-694-8573 and pay your bill using that card.This is a contract free offer for 24 months, with a fix monthly bill of $79.99 after the first three months of Subscription.
Bonus offer: If you are able to clear your billings within 24 hours, you will automatically will be qualified to earn 100 Loyalty Reward points as good as cash from Comcast Xfinity that can be redeemed by you any time to get one month of extra services.
Bonus offer: If you are able to pay for 06 months of service up front, you will be qualified to receive a Samsung Galaxy Tab® 4 tablet free.
Please feel free to contact for further queries from 8am till 6:30pm PST (Operational timings) at 1-866-694-8573.
Regards,
David Clarke
Employee ID LHM
Loyalty Rewards Department
Comcast Xfinity* 30 Days money back guarantee. No cancellation or recurring fee applied.
This is a service-related email. Comcast will occasionally send you service-related emails to inform you of service changes, upgrades or new benefits. Services and features are subject to Comcast’s standard terms and conditions of service and are subject to change. Copyright 2015 Comcast. All other trademarks are properties of their respective owners. Comcast respects your privacy.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Green Dot BBB MoneyPak Scams What You Need to Know 6-2015.mp4[/flv]
The Better Business Bureau offers its advice about how to avoid Green Dot MoneyPak schemes, which are increasingly common online. (:55)
“That email message convinced me it was all a scam,” Nelson said. “No cable company would write something like this and send it out to customers. They also don’t apparently realize Walgreens and 7-11 have nothing to do with each other. Can you imagine Comcast telling a customer they have to get the ‘green’ prepaid card -without- the plastic wrapping. Most of their customers cannot understand their monthly bill. They are not going to understand the confusing world of prepaid credit cards. It made no sense.”
Stop the Cap! called the “Loyalty Rewards Department of Comcast” and we were disconnected each time we asked a question that did not involve taking advantage of their offer. We called back, trying different departments, and each time we were connected to the same Indian-accented man who had hung up on us before. After the fifth call, they blocked our phone number from reaching them.
We next called Comcast’s security department and got nowhere. They were not interested because we were not Comcast customers inside a Comcast service area and invited us to have our reader call them directly. When Nelson tried, he was left on hold for over 45 minutes and when he finally spoke to someone, they couldn’t be bothered.
“It amazed me how little interest they showed in this operation, which has apparently suckered customers all over the country,” Nelson said. “I asked them to call the number and hear how these people are directly misrepresenting themselves as Comcast, right down to repeating their Xfinity slogans. The representative seemed to have heard the same story before and seemed mostly concerned about telling me Comcast was not responsible for any money paid to the scam artists. They did not even seem to care when I told them they had my personal Comcast account information and suggested the scammers got it off Facebook. Yeah, because I always put my Comcast account number on Facebook, if I used Facebook.”
With further investigation, Stop the Cap! identified several numbers (as well as currently active 866-694-8573) associated with this operation. If any of these numbers call you, hang up: 855-328-7913, 855-859-6946, 800-526-1037, and 800-399-5791.
If you were scammed by these people or have other useful information to share about your experiences with them, please share in the comment section.
[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WWMT Kalamazoo Scam targeting Comcast customers makes appearance in Michigan 6-18-15.flv[/flv]
WWMT in Kalamazoo, Mich. reports the Comcast Loyalty Rewards scam has affected customers across Michigan through aggressive telemarketing campaigns. (2:01)
Interesting story. Since I never answer unidentified calls, I won’t be speaking to the con artists, but I do get two or three calls from them every day. At the beginning they would hang up after four rings, but now they let it ring ten times or more. Next time I’ll just pick it up and put it back down immediately. Thanks
I have had the exact same experience, including the run around from Comcast so called security department. I think the hacker is actually the same person who takes Comcast’s security fraud alert calls. That must be how he had all my account info using my email address. Every month I get calls from the same number that I now have blocked as phishing. I see they have called everyday this week. We all need to say GOODBYE Comcast!
I received a call from the number today and almost fell for the scam. Initially the person who called Paul Smith (based in Oakland CA) with typical Indian accent gave such a good offer that I could not resist. (contract free $80 per month includes tax, installation, etc). Then he had the billing information from my old address where I had Comcast and I was ok with that. Normally the last 4 of Social seems ok so I provided him that too. He said that all i would need to do is pay 6 months at once to Comcast. I… Read more »
It looks like the telemarket en masse every so often and when the calls come in, people Google the number and are ending up here. This article caused a massive traffic spike today so I can only imagine the number of calls. It looks like they are modifying the scam to get past the high hurdle of getting someone into a CVS or other store to acquire a card immediately themselves, which is a pain. But this scam is now even more dangerous because look at all the ways you can load one of these cards without an in-store warning… Read more »
After arguing with my wife trying to tell her this was a GOOD deal and that we would be saving money on out bill, she Google this and showed it to me..my wife is still gloating…I thought for sure this was a good deal and it was a scam..I might just cancel comcast altogether be use of this! Stupid scam!!
You can get her back by threatening to cancel Comcast unless they give you a better rate, and they will! Then you can tell her she may have been right about the scam, but it was you that got the better deal in the end. 🙂
Yesterday, I received a call from these scammers saying they would offer me 50% off of my Comcast monthly bill, and almost fell for this scam. With my bill already very high, the “deal” seemed to be irresistible. During the call, the scammer, Chris Taylor (Employee ID C01, EXT 713) asked me to confirm my personal information, which he had already recited to me at the beginning of the call. The scammers told me I would get a Debit card in the mail and wanted me to go to any Walmart. As an initial deposit, I was told to put… Read more »
Same thing happened to me and when I called back telling them I reported them to the CFPB, FTC and to Comcast he laughed and said you forgot the BBB and the FBI. He thought it was so funny and even admitted he wasn’t with Comcast. So wrong. I don’t understand how people can do this.. I really hope this “company” gets shut down!
I do not think they are getting the info from comcast because I have cablevision and never had comcast and they are calling me in Brooklyn NY.
(edit) I just realized comcast purchased time warner which I did have quite a while ago.
I received the same fantastic offer of a 50% reduction of monthly Comcast bill if I accepted the NetSpend debit card. The condition was, when I received the new Net Spend card I had to deposit $1000.00 on the card, which I could immediately withdraw. But, I had to leave enough on the card to pay the new Comcast monthly rate. And, each month use the NetSpend debit card to pay the Comcast bill. What made the deal sound legitimate was they knew my current level of Comcast service and my billing information. They did ask for my social security… Read more »
If you had done that, and they sent you the card, they probably also have its number and PIN and would start repeatedly checking your balance after the card was mailed to you. You deposit $1,000 on the card one day and before you could withdraw it the next, they likely would. They also probably got at least $20 just for referring you to NetSpend. The scammers have no relationship to Comcast, do not pay Comcast bills on anyone’s behalf and basically just steal the money entirely for themselves. Then a month later you find out when your Comcast bill… Read more »
Almost got scammed–then applied the ol’ “if the deal sounds too good to be true, it is!” common sense rule. While speaking to the ‘Indian-accented” individual “Justin” on the phone, quickly googled NetSpend Comcast Scam and came upon this page–thank you!
I was not willing to agree to give them info either but to “prove” to me that they were legit they added showtime and
Cinemax to my lineup WHILE I WAS ON THE PHONE WITH THEM. How the hell do they have all my info and have the ability to turn on and off premium cable channels on my TV? WTF!
Phone number 1-855-679-0359 is a Comcast scam number calling people