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Ross667's profile

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Tuesday, February 19th, 2019 7:39 PM

International Call Scam & Spurious AT&T Fees

I've been getting a ton of missed calls from various countries overnight for about the last month and a half. These are numbers in the '+111 1 11 11 11 11' format listed as coming from places like Morocco, Haiti, Serbia, etc. Apparently, it's a scam that involves the scammer calling from another country, hanging up as soon as they can after the phone rings, and hoping people call them back. Somehow, they get a portion of the insanely high outgoing international call rates, so now there are hundreds of people doing this to try to dupe people who fall for it. I made the mistake early on of calling one back the morning I had a new employee from China starting, thinking it might be her, and stayed on just over a minute trying to hear the person on the other line. It was after this that 30-40 calls would start coming in overnight every night, and I found a $22.98 charge on my bill for the call.

 

Calling AT&T Customer Service was super aggravating, too. I explained the scam the same way as I did here, but they went off on a long monologue about how it's people calling pretending to be AT&T to get my account information (which it clearly isn't; I'm familiar with phishing scams). They said they couldn't turn off my international calling when I asked, and sent information about Call Protect and MobileSecurity, which I already have. So the call produced no results toward refunding the scam charge or stopping further attempts, and then I got an email saying I had a new $30 charge for "Device Purchase Without Commitment", which makes no sense and is apparently going to bring my bill up to $165.15.

 

Does anybody have experience with this, know how to stop those calls, and/or know of the best way to reverse one or both of these charges? I've been with AT&T for over 10 years now, but it might be time for a change if things get worse when I reach out for help.

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Official Solution

ACE - Professor

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3K Messages

5 years ago

@Ross667 You can turn on Do Not Disturb for certain hours and only allow contacts or favorites to ring through. This will stop unknown calls at all hours at night.  

 

Check your bill and see if another line of service has been added since you mentioned a $30.00 device fee added.  Would definitely change your password, pin and security questions for your account.    

ACE - Sage

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117.2K Messages

5 years ago

And don’t call back numbers who don’t leave you a voicemail message.

 

Contributor

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1 Message

4 years ago

We had the same issue with overnight international calls ..  My wife actually checked one of the voice mails left.   That month we were hit with ~$100 in extra charges for an international call.   I spent over 45 minutes on the phone with AT&T  help line and was basically told  "TO BAD".   AT&T did offer a one time credit of $25 to help off set but,  had no other suggestions or paths to resolution.    Note we have been with AT&T since 2004.  Not once have we ever made an international call.     

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