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Did Spectrum or another provider call with an offer to lower your monthly TV, cable, or internet bill in exchange for a pre-payment or fee? It wasn’t them. It was a scammer, and you’re not alone. This year, the FTC has gotten thousands of reports — including many from older adults — about scammers pretending to be Spectrum to try to trick people out of their money or personal information.
Here’s how the scam often works: You get a phone call, recorded message, or text with an offer to lower your monthly payments. The caller — or the person who picks up when you call the number they give you — says you need to “prepay” part of your bill to qualify. They tell you to pay using gift cards because they’re partnering with a company for a promotion, and to call them back with the gift card number. Once you do, they collect that and other personal information over the phone.
If you get a call like this, here are a few things to know:
For more information on these types of scams, visit ftc.gov/imposters. And if you spot this, or any scam, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
Thanks to the Center for Elder Law and Justice for sharing reports about this scam through the FTC’s Community Advocate Center (CAC). This program helps groups that provide free or low-cost legal services with reporting fraud and other bad practices on behalf of their clients. For more information about the Community Advocate Center, visit ReportFraud.ftc.gov/community.
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The purpose of this blog and its comments section is to inform readers about Federal Trade Commission activity, and share information to help them avoid, report, and recover from fraud, scams, and bad business practices. Your thoughts, ideas, and concerns are welcome, and we encourage comments. But keep in mind, this is a moderated blog. We review all comments before they are posted, and we won’t post comments that don’t comply with our commenting policy. We expect commenters to treat each other and the blog writers with respect.
We don’t edit comments to remove objectionable content, so please ensure that your comment contains none of the above. The comments posted on this blog become part of the public domain. To protect your privacy and the privacy of other people, please do not include personal information. Opinions in comments that appear in this blog belong to the individuals who expressed them. They do not belong to or represent views of the Federal Trade Commission.
I have hung up on “Spectrum” numerous times.
I never received a call, text, email or other form of communication from the so called organization you are referring to. I have, however, received a call and a emergency alert from “Teamviewer” pretending to be a organization helping to protect google.
So, notify all people who use the internet for their use to be cautious of “Teamviewer”.
I was scammed out of $5,500.00 by someone saying they were from Comcast/ Xfinity, so be careful of them too.
Keep this kind of information coming!
I just wanted to thank you for this information.
These scammers have been calling my home for the last 4 or 5 years 10 to 15 times a day spoofing different phone numbers mostly disconnected AT&T telephone numbers pretending to be from either AT&T or Spectrum. Why is the FTC just getting around to letting people know instead of making AT&T block these calls completely?
Thanks for this valuable information
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