Today at approximately 10:30 AM I received a phone call from someone at Raven Media I think claiming to be calling on behalf of American Express, and stating that they wanted to offer me a $25 American Express gift card as a thank you for my being a great customer or being interested in their services, or something, and referencing card ending in (insert last 5 digits of my AMEX). I said that first of all, I'm on the Do Not Call list, so why are you calling me, and second of all who is Raven Media, and how are you related to American Express?
The guy (sounded like young African American male) got all huffy with me and said "now listen to me, you were recently visiting (within the last 48 hrs he said, total BS) a website looking at Federal Grant funding, and you clicked on one of our ads, and so we have the right to call you". So I said, I never, ever buy anything from a click-through ad, but I was researching grant funding and might have accidentally clicked on one of your ads. I told him I use a popup-blocker. I said, that still doesn't explain how you got my credit card number, and furthermore, what does grant funding have to do with online shopping? He said "if you'd just stop doing all the talking, I'll explain all that to you, but you want to be the one doing all the talking". I said "tell me the name of the website I clicked on by which you got my credit card number". At this point, he hung up on me.
I have reported this to AMEX, used the Las Vegas address provided by complaint. AMEX says there have been no recent charges from Raven Media on my account. I see from the other reports here that Raven Media is related to Google Money and I did investigate that about 6 months, ago, by clicking through an ad on Monster.com (I think it was Monster) re part time marketing work. I ended up accepting the free CD-rom ($1.99 for shipping) but called both companies involved in this THE NEXT DAY, AND BEFORE THE CD WAS SENT, and told them to cancel my account, that I wasn't interested in incurring any monthly charges, and that I had been required to provide my contact info (set up an account) in order to get to the next website that provided info about their offer, and that once I saw what it was about, I decided I wasn't interested. They said do you still want the CD-rom? I said, sure, why not, it's only $2 so I let them mail it to me. This was in November or December.
I just pulled out the CD-ROM and sure enough, it is titled "Growing Rich with Google" and it is published by Raven Media, and the address is 2620 S. Maryland Parkway #969, Las Vegas NV 89109.US Postage and Fees were paid out of St. George UT, 84770, "Permit #1129".
So they are correct, I clicked on one of their websites, but it had nothing to do with my visiting federal grant funding sites, had nothing to do with American Express, and was not within the last 48 hours. The guy that called me today did not mention Growing Rich with Google (and I contacted them some time ago canceling those accounts - also told them no junk mail, please) and refused to tell me how he got my credit card number. I couldn't see the phone # on my phone when he was calling, might also have been blocked.
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