Your BBB has received reports from many businesses that received suspicious orders through TTY or telephone relay services. These services are meant to assist the hearing impaired in making telephone calls and rely on an operator who relays a typed message from the caller to the business. Because, by law, the operator is not allowed to disclose the origin of the call, this service allows the scammers to hide their identity.
Reports of scammers plying their trade through telephone relay services — typically used by the hearing impaired to make phone calls — are cropping up all across the country. This scam is experiencing a comeback and small business owners should take precautions to avoid losing thousands of dollars.
Your BBB has received reports from many businesses that received suspicious orders through TTY or telephone relay services. These services are meant to assist the hearing impaired in making telephone calls and often rely on an operator who relays a typed message from the caller to the business. Because, by law, the operator is not allowed to disclose the origin of the call, this service allows the scammers to hide their identity.
The scam being employed over telephone relay is a variation on an overpayment scam. A business receives an order from a customer over the phone through a telephone relay service. The customer will explain that the delivery service they’d like to use won’t take credit cards and asks that the business wire money to the shipper and simply tack the cost onto the overall order and charge their credit card for the total amount. Any money wired to the supposed shipper, will actually end up in the hands of the “customer”/scammer. The credit card number provided is stolen. The business loses the goods or services ordered by the scammer along with any money wired to the phony delivery service.
Businesses that are being targeted by this scam vary. Your BBB has heard from caterers, transmission shops, breeders and other retailers in Amarillo as well as similar type industries across the country who all received calls from scammers using relay services in recent weeks.
One example was a glass company in Georgia that fell victim to this scam. Over a telephone relay, the scammer made a special order for $4,000 worth of glass. The company ordered the glass from the manufacturer but became suspicious when the customer requested that the glass company wire payment to a shipper after deducting the amount from the credit card number provided. The glass company was able to track down the real owner of the credit card who didn’t even realize their number had been stolen. Luckily the glass company did not wire any money to the shipper—which was actually the scammers—however, the company was out the $4,000 spent on the glass.
To help identify fraud over telephone relay services:
• If the customer is using a TTY Relay Operator ask the customer for his/her full name, address and telephone number.
• Ask the customer to provide the name of the issuing bank and its toll-free customer service number as printed on the back of all credit cards.
• Ask the customer for the three or four digit Card Verification Code that is found near the account number on the back or front of a credit card.
• Tell the customer that you will check with the bank and call them back. When you do that, keep good notes. Verify all information the customer provides. If a customer objects, explain that these procedures are for their protection, as well.
• If the customer still objects to providing any of the above information, abandon the conversation and advise that you are not prepared to do business this way.