Capital One is Caller ID spoofers are playing games again, and a brief Google search reveals I’m only one of hundreds, maybe thousands, involved.
A woman claiming to be from Capital One Bank called here last night. Her voice was so heavily accented (Indian?) that we had difficulty understanding each other. It sounded like she was saying I owed them $170 or some such amount. I told her I hadn’t used my card since last fall, when they jacked up my interest rate for no reason. Then I asked her what the charge was for, in case I’d forgotten some purchase. She couldn’t give me a name. Then she said something about a charge for balance payment insurance. I told her I’ve never bought such a thing. I never really did understand what she was after, so I just told her if I owed any money, send me a statement.
After I hung up, I got online and checked my Capital One account. Sure enough, $0 balance. I don’t know if it was a scam of some kind, or really Capital One, but either way, I don’t conduct financial affairs with strangers on the phone.
She was calling from 1-800-955-6600, a Cap One number. Google it, and you’ll find people are in an uproar all over the country about calls from this number. And from what they’re saying, I could be in for a long series of harassing phone calls.
I have my own imaginary take on Capital One, and it’s not at all flattering to them. Bad management, caught with their fingers in the cookie jar when the economy started to tank, and trying to save themselves by jacking up the interest rates on all their customers. The really sad thing is the spoofers, posing as Capital One, might actually succeed in bullying some people into sending them money. It’s a despicable thing to do, and way too hard to track them down and punish them.
Note, 6/21/2008: Got four more calls yesterday, and another this morning at 8 a.m. Called Capital One and confirmed they are not the ones making the calls. So it does appear that there is some ID spoofing going on.
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You sure do know how to educate folks on a wide variety of subjects. I just feel bad for the people who easily fall for this type of scam, especially an elderly person. Breaks my heart!
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I couldn’t understand the woman well enough to even guess if it was a scam or not. It may be cheaper for a company to farm out customer service to an overseas operation, but I’ll be the first to say if I can’t understand the person, it isn’t customer service; it’s customer frustration, aggravation, and alienation.
If someone is calling you pretending to be Capital One then it’s not their fault.
Yes that is their customer service phone number but called ID can be easily fooled (google called id spoofing).
If you have any questions whether it was them or not calling you, you need to figure that out first before jumping to conclusions about the company. Call the customer service number on the back of your card and see if they called you.
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Granted, it could be ID spoofing. If it is, then the Internet is rife with people reporting similar experiences. As for jumping to conclusions about Cap One, I did that last year, but not until after I’d called their customer service and confirmed that yes, they were indeed screwing me.