When Penny Hammond discovered a charge for $49.89 to renew her Amazon Prime account, she immediately looked to Amazon consumer service to get a refund.
Hammond told News 6 that she rarely used the service and decided to cancel it.
The education employee dialed a number she spotted on the Amazon webpage, or at least what she thought was the webpage.
The 844 exchange led her to “Sam,” who prompted her to provide her full Amazon account to start the process of issuing a refund.
“Because it was a big company and how they were going about it, I just didn’t second-guess them,“ Hammond said.
News 6 contacted Amazon customer service Monday and confirmed the 1-844-784-6563 Hammond used was not part of the Amazon service network.
When the Amazon representative called the number herself, she said a man calling himself Sam answered by saying, "Tech support" rather than, “Thank you for calling Amazon,” which is the standard protocol for the company.
Hammond told News 6 she received a message from Amazon.com confirming gift cards had been redeemed by krisbrown2604@gmail.com on Jan. 8.
She never heard of Brown and never ordered gift cards for anyone.
An email sent by Amazon confirmed the redeemed cards were valued at $147 and $247.
Amazon’s security caught the suspicious activity and returned the $49.89 within 24 hours.
Hammond’s bank is investigating the charges and is working to refund the money to her account.
The legitimate Amazon customer service center number is 1-866-216-1072.
Amazon disabled the password to Hammond’s account, reversed any changes made by the party and canceled any pending orders.