I got a call that said it was from “your local newspaper.” It said that an online payment had not gone through and that I need to check if my card had expired or I changed information. To do so I should call customer service.
But it did not give me a number to call. It didn’t ask for a card number. There was no way to get back to the caller or provide any information. It was designed to go to voicemail so it didn’t expect any interaction with me.
I double-checked with my actual customer service and there’s nothing wrong with my bill payments, although my card will indeed expire soon and I will need to contact them about the new expiration date. The spammer couldn’t know this, though it’s a good reminder.
What could possibly be the purpose behind a call like this?
perhaps it was automated, from the newspaper and a specific payment had failed to process for a failure on their end (it happens) and it was a simple reminder (in error, but the system doesn’t know that).
There also exists the possibility that your phone number managed to get into someone else’s contact info. Mrs. ToKnow has been for a week or so now getting calls from someone who (presumably) incorrectly entered her phone number into one of those “I’m looking to buy a car, contact me with your best offers” web sites. Ten or twelve calls and texts a day from car dealerships in Texas. Finally it’s a new month and no one’s trying to meet quotas, so it’s tapered off a bit since Wednesday.
Yeah, if the recording literally said something vague like “your local newspaper” and not the actual name of the paper, that is pretty strong evidence that it was spam.
Maybe they expected you to just call back the number on your caller ID? I’m not sure why they wouldn’t also include that number in the message; maybe they’re frequently changing the number they’re using and didn’t want to have to re-record the message for each one.
When you say it was “designed to go to voicemail” do you mean there was a beep at the end of the call for you to respond, or it was nothing but a recorded message?
Also, my experience with landlines has taught me there’s some way for an automated call to know whether a human picked up, or the call went to VM. The live operator is supposed to respond quickly if a human picks up, but they usually don’t and the call disconnects itself after a few seconds.
I suspect this is to see what numbers are live and that you’ll get another call from a live person explaining you already got a phone call and STILL did not pay so you need to do it NOW!
wouldn’t be the first, or last, time that whoever recorded the thing or bought the “prepackaged message plan” didn’t thnk it thru.
generic message is cheap - they assume the callee would know what/who was meant by it or would ignore it if incorrect.
another poster thought as spam maybe they expect you to redial the number called from - but with the number of spoofed numbers that lead nowhere - that seems unlikely - especially since a live number would so easily track back to the culprit for potential prosecution.