I thought I would post this so that someone might be forewarned and thus forearmed against on-line fraud. Why the government cannot do better with this I will never understand. I think these people prey on older people and since I am getting there it worries me.
This may be a little more backstory than necessary. But we bought a new Roku streaming player--even though we do not have a 4k TV I got the ultra version figuring whatever the difference in price it was worth it to make sure we got the best experience with something we use all the time. It replaced a Roku we had had for a long time. It would be nice if logging into Roku it would set up all of the services automatically, but it does not seem to work that way.
So I was setting up our various services. Netflix went utterly smoothly. Next up was Prime, which did not. We did nothing other than follow the instructions that came up on the screen, inputting passwords and the like, and also using a cell phone according to the instructions that came up, and it was not working. At one point, a phone number came up that we were to call Amazon Prime at. I do not even think it was a call if this is not working. I think it said to just to call for the next step. So we got "Frank" who had a Middle Eastern or Indian subcontinent accent, no surprise there. In the course of the conversation, Frank got Prime working--it seemed he had access to the Amazon Prime system to do that.
But then he said that we needed to update Prime membership soon, and Prime was offering two years, usually $139 a year for $199 or three years for $299. Seemed legit--the guy had just fixed our TV service and we had called him from a prompt that came up in the process of setting up Prime on the new Roku. Sounded good to us, so we went for three. Frank sends us an email with a hyperlink named Amazon billing or some such to pay the $299. It gave us a choice of paying via creditcard or Paypal. I was suspicious because wouldn't Amazon have our credit card already, but my wife was the one on the phone. I am really not sure I would have stopped it. She out of an abundance of caution paid with Paypal with the money coming through our creditcard not out of a bank account. After she hit pay, she noticed the money was sent to some weird individuals name and questioned the guy about it, who explained that it was the name for a seller on Amazon or some BS that this offer was going through. We got an email receipt for the payment that looked rather more legit. Anyway, it did not seem like we could do much with the guy, and for instance were not smart enough to request an immediate refund. Again, the guy seemed to have fixed our Prime service.
But after we got off we immediately contacted Amazon and there is no special three year for $299 Prime membership offer. We contacted our credit card (Chase) and Paypal immediately, putting in claims. Bottom line is that Paypal called back today and says it is going to refund of $299. But this was a lot of aggravation. I am really not sure how trying to set up an existing Prime TV service on a new Roku streamer lead to this, but I am glad we paid with Paypal.
There seems to be some things on the net about this kind of thing, but I did not see that any applied exactly to what happened to us. For instance, I do not think we mistyped the URL for any website.
It is scary out there. I thought of myself as pretty savvy about these things and my wife thought the same of herself.
This may be a little more backstory than necessary. But we bought a new Roku streaming player--even though we do not have a 4k TV I got the ultra version figuring whatever the difference in price it was worth it to make sure we got the best experience with something we use all the time. It replaced a Roku we had had for a long time. It would be nice if logging into Roku it would set up all of the services automatically, but it does not seem to work that way.
So I was setting up our various services. Netflix went utterly smoothly. Next up was Prime, which did not. We did nothing other than follow the instructions that came up on the screen, inputting passwords and the like, and also using a cell phone according to the instructions that came up, and it was not working. At one point, a phone number came up that we were to call Amazon Prime at. I do not even think it was a call if this is not working. I think it said to just to call for the next step. So we got "Frank" who had a Middle Eastern or Indian subcontinent accent, no surprise there. In the course of the conversation, Frank got Prime working--it seemed he had access to the Amazon Prime system to do that.
But then he said that we needed to update Prime membership soon, and Prime was offering two years, usually $139 a year for $199 or three years for $299. Seemed legit--the guy had just fixed our TV service and we had called him from a prompt that came up in the process of setting up Prime on the new Roku. Sounded good to us, so we went for three. Frank sends us an email with a hyperlink named Amazon billing or some such to pay the $299. It gave us a choice of paying via creditcard or Paypal. I was suspicious because wouldn't Amazon have our credit card already, but my wife was the one on the phone. I am really not sure I would have stopped it. She out of an abundance of caution paid with Paypal with the money coming through our creditcard not out of a bank account. After she hit pay, she noticed the money was sent to some weird individuals name and questioned the guy about it, who explained that it was the name for a seller on Amazon or some BS that this offer was going through. We got an email receipt for the payment that looked rather more legit. Anyway, it did not seem like we could do much with the guy, and for instance were not smart enough to request an immediate refund. Again, the guy seemed to have fixed our Prime service.
But after we got off we immediately contacted Amazon and there is no special three year for $299 Prime membership offer. We contacted our credit card (Chase) and Paypal immediately, putting in claims. Bottom line is that Paypal called back today and says it is going to refund of $299. But this was a lot of aggravation. I am really not sure how trying to set up an existing Prime TV service on a new Roku streamer lead to this, but I am glad we paid with Paypal.
There seems to be some things on the net about this kind of thing, but I did not see that any applied exactly to what happened to us. For instance, I do not think we mistyped the URL for any website.
It is scary out there. I thought of myself as pretty savvy about these things and my wife thought the same of herself.
