Got a call from someone offering my choice of one of two free gifts to "show appreciation for our business" while placing an order for some packing tape. I didn't think anything of this, as I happened to be in need of some. I spoke with a "George" who claimed to be recovering from laryngitis (possibly making voice definition difficult?). He told me I would be receiving a call from his "shipping manager" the next morning.
When the call came, I mentioned that I hadn't found a record of their company in our system and asked when our last order was. The shipping guy admitted that we hadn't ordered from them before and that they had obtained our company info from Dun & Bradstreet. He also alleged that our call was being recorded for "confirmation purposes". I asked for his company info and was given the address, an 800 number and a fax number. They wanted to send me 3 cases of packing tape, but I asked them to whittle it down to a single case and was quoted a price of $147.85. He said he would have to approve that with the first guy.
"George" then called back later to confirm the single case and suddenly the mp4 player they had originally offered to send me was on back order for 2 weeks and I was told they were going to send a Sony Dreamcast instead. I told him I had no problem waiting a couple of weeks and that he could hang on to the Sony, but he simply said that no, they were just going to send the Sony instead.
Thinking to myself that the "appreciation" had seemed to diminish somewhat with the size of my order, I attempted to call the shipping guy back to see about the mp4 player, when i discovered that the 800 number went straight to a prerecorded message advertising another 800 number for "stimulating conversation". At this point, I Googled the company and found a number of scam reports. After confirming that the fax number I'd been given was at least a real fax number, I immediately faxed a message of Order cancellation and advised them that anything sent would be summarily refused without liability, but who knows if the fax actually belonged to them or not...
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