Sprint Customer Service?

I may have just stopped myself from being the victim of a scam.  I am not sure.

I received a call on my cell phone.  When I answered, I heard enough noise to know I had connected but nobody was there.  I redialed the number, and they answered, “Can I help you?”  I said that they had just called me.  They identified themselves as Sprint and asked me if I had a Sprint/Nextel phone.  Well, I do…  they asked for my name, and then for the last 4 numbers of my SSN.  I gave them my name, and then stopped myself before giving out my SSN info.  There was no identification on my phone other than the phone number, so how did I know they were Sprint?

I asked what the call was about, and she said it was just a courtesy call, making sure I was getting good service.  If that was the case, why did they need my SSN (even the last 4 numbers)?  I then asked why, if they were being courteous, they were calling me knowing that I was paying for minutes.  Her response was, well, we’re Sprint, when we call you you don’t get charged.  I said, well, you are not identified on my phone as being Sprint, and I had to call you back due to not connecting when you called me.

Sometime around then I got angry and hung up.  She was not willing to give ME any identification.  So I called my *2 (Sprint Customer Service).  The representative there was nice and asked what the number was… I stated I did not write it down (and could not check the number while I was on the same phone).  He stated that most of Sprint’s numbers were 800 or 866, and I should check the number and call back.

I did so.  It took a bit of time to get the new customer support person to understand why I was calling, but she put me on hold and checked the number.  After about 4 minutes on hold, she stated that she could not find that number in the Sprint directory.  So I asked her to report the situation, hopefully to prevent others from being scammed who were not as suspicious as I am.

I’m putting this out there to let everyone know not to give out information until you totally trust the party you are speaking with… and I know that in some cases you will be wrong anyhow, but it just pays to be suspicious.  In this case, there were no giveaways or hype (yet, but maybe I didn’t let her get around to it), and there was just BARELY enough to get me suspicious.  Maybe it WAS from Sprint, but just maybe scammers are getting smarter.

Hugs,
Me