I nearly got taken by a scammer because Amazon transferred me to one. I purchased a set of Reolink cameras on Amazon, (they've been great) one of them failed a couple months in. I contacted Amazon customer support (via my Amazon login and in their interface) and they wanted to troubleshoot with their technical team. Eventually the (very helpful) Amazon technician suggested contacting Reolink for support and started a 3-way call. The "Reolink" technician got my phone number and then said they wanted to call me back.
They called me back a minute later (now without Amazon recording the conversation) and asked me for my NVR's serial number so they could connect to my NVR. I was shocked they had a backdoor into my NVR but I figured I'd let it play out. A minute later the technician said that he was having trouble connecting because "an internet virus is corrupting my firewall". I was extremely confused and thought it must be a translation problem. Until he kept insisting it was a problem and became belligerent and angry. He said I needed to pay $300 to have an on-site technician troubleshoot the problem. I got angry because he was making some weird excuse for their camera not working, and wanting to charge me rather than just ship me a replacement. I refused and he started mocking me. I demanded his manager and he ignored me. Eventually I hung up and called Amazon back.
The Amazon technician was helpful and shipped me a replacement. I contacted Reolink via email to complain about their technician. They responded that they have no on-site technicians and that it was a scam!
I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number...
They called me back a minute later (now without Amazon recording the conversation) and asked me for my NVR's serial number so they could connect to my NVR. I was shocked they had a backdoor into my NVR but I figured I'd let it play out. A minute later the technician said that he was having trouble connecting because "an internet virus is corrupting my firewall". I was extremely confused and thought it must be a translation problem. Until he kept insisting it was a problem and became belligerent and angry. He said I needed to pay $300 to have an on-site technician troubleshoot the problem. I got angry because he was making some weird excuse for their camera not working, and wanting to charge me rather than just ship me a replacement. I refused and he started mocking me. I demanded his manager and he ignored me. Eventually I hung up and called Amazon back.
The Amazon technician was helpful and shipped me a replacement. I contacted Reolink via email to complain about their technician. They responded that they have no on-site technicians and that it was a scam!
I was blown away that Amazon would transfer me to a scammer. I contacted Amazon again and let them know what had happened. Hopefully they will figure out how their guy got this scammers phone number and teach him how to find a 3rd party phone number...