New scam

[Candisnelly]

I received a phonecall from someone claiming to be from Telus offering a new promotion for a brand new phone free of charge. This number had caller ID of "Alberta" (my home province) and the number was a local cell phone number in my area. I went along with it thinking it was authentic and provided personal details such as name, address, email address, as well as giving him my Telus pin. we went through the full thing but I did not provide any credit card details. he said that there will be a verification phonecall later and then my new phone will be on its way. After telling my boyfriend about this, he convinced me it was a scam. I called the Telus help line and the guy stated that there were no current promotions going on and that it was for sure a scam and he submitted a claim to Telus for possible fraud. I then proceeded to change my Telus pin and set up 2 factor authentication.

The verification phonecall never came and I felt better about it. Today, I received a phonecall from a man named Elijah at the number 519-607-1837 which displayed a caller ID "Alberta" (my home province) and he was just wanting to verify my purchase and was stating that he saw my Telus pin was changed a few hours ago and he needed me to provide him with my new one that I had changed it to. I explained to him that I no longer want to continue with this as I believe this isn't authentic and explained that I contacted Telus directly and they told me there was no such promotion currently. he then said that there are many different departments and sales and customer service don't have anything to do with another and the person I spoke to would be unaware of what the sales department was up to. he reassured me that its legit and that I should feel comfortable considering he never asked me any credit card details and that wouldn't make sense if someone was trying to scam me. he sounded very believable so I then told him my new Telus pin. he said he would phone me back in a few minutes once he verifies that its good to go. During the period off the phone, I was googling this number and nothing related to Telus was showing up so I phoned back and he answered stating "Hello, welcome to Telus mobility this is Elijah" so I hung up. I was just trying to see if its an actual Telus number. he then phoned me back asking why I phoned him and I told him it was an accident as I was just trying to copy and paste his phone number into google since I still didn't believe him and it accidentally dialled. he said ok bye ill call you in a few mins. few minutes later, he phoned me back and he said that there should be a text message to my phone from Telus giving a security pin and I just need to provide it to him to verify and since it came from Telus, this should be proof that he isn't scamming me. At this point I got concerned because im picturing that someone on his end is providing all this information to Telus and pretending to be me. I told him this and wanted him to tell me the pin because this was my concern. that if I tell him my pin, someone in his side is feeding it back into Telus and that at this point, I told him I don't trust him that Im not being scammed and I would rather pay outright for a full price phone than risk it. he then seemed very annoyed with me and said that he will remove me from the call list and he doesn't understand why I don't trust him and im not being rational and he said "ok bye" then hung up. I then went to my Telus account and again changed my pin. 

I again reached out to Telus support and explained this situation and was asking them to verify if there is any such promotion or anybody working for Telus with that name/number and she told me that there is no promotion currently and it was likely a scam. They reassured me that because I did not provide them with my second pin, they will not be able to gain access to my account and I made the right decision by not providing it. They also stated that any agent calling from telus will have the TELUS caller ID display. I was encouraged to change my password as well. 

[Nighthawk · Accepted solution]

Yes, that was a scam. When Telus calls, their toll free number is usually what appears on call display. The 519 area code is from Ontario, not Alberta. The scammers are spoofing (faking) the caller ID information and they are usually calling from overseas. They also use VoIP services like TextNow to obtain a Canadian number that they can route back to their overseas scam call centre.

Best practice is to contact Telus directly. If the offer sounds too good to be true, it is a scam. Especially a free phone when many of the popular phones these days cost over $1,000.