Dodgy Companies
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Thunderbox666 wrote:
How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Insiders? Your company certainly wouldn't be the fist to fall for this.
Cheers, Vikram.
The hands that help are holier than the lips that pray.
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I was thinking that as a possibility, but we are not a big company, so they would not have enough to gain to make it worthwhile. And if they did, they did not make the call on a company phone, or use company email so it would make it hard to prove anyway.
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In future you might want to try an old trick: put in a unique character in some part of your name or address, I do this all the time when signing up for something online. Then when a 3rd party references using that name I know the source. Usually I deliberately misspell a contact name when signing up with something that looks a bit on the dodgy side and keep track of it. Probably though in this case they just pick the newest models of printers and cold call and get a hit a certain percentage of the time or they phone a receptionist about the printer and get them to tell them the details without realizing the person phone really has no idea at all. An old confidence trick, the old movie Brimstone and Treacle with Sting playing the confidence man illustrated that pretty well.
"The great pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do." - Walter Bagehot
John C wrote:
Probably though in this case they just pick the newest models of printers and cold call
Not to likely in this instance. It was an end of line printer, and they knew the exact model, that we had the extra tray, and that we had only just purchased it.
John C wrote:
phone a receptionist about the printer and get them to tell them the details without realizing the person phone really has no idea at all
I asked the receptionist, and she said that she had only checked and confirmed after they gave her an exact model.
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Thunderbox666 wrote:
How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
They probably go through your rubbish. In the UK, a lot of fraud can be traced back to criminals going through peoples rubbish. With a new printer, the box was probably sitting outside along with the other rubbish, so it wouldn't have been difficult to find. John.
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Dumpster Diving? :omg:
-- Help me! I'm turning into a grapefruit! Buzzwords!
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Perhaps the delivery person told them?
"Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..." "There is no one who loves pain itself, who seeks after it and wants to have it, simply because it is pain..."
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Not knowing the details, maybe the company you purchased the printer gets some products from a 3rd party supplier. If the company you purchased from is respectable, then I would complain to them. If it tarnishes their name, they'll deal with it.
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So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
A lot of small companies I know use fake names for such things are orders and such. Then when the call comes in you know immediately the source.
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Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway -
So I get this call today saying that {dodgy company} wants a purchase order for some ink toners we ordered yesterday. I order all toners, and I definitely did not order one off them. But they had all the details of us (which i know isn't hard to get) and of our new printer which we only received 2 weeks ago (which would be nearly impossible for a outside company to know). This same company had rang our branches before and tricked them into accepting toners for printers they didn't even have and then invoiced them. When I look on the net for this company, there is no reference to them, and in the ABR (Australian Business Register), there is no company listed in their location under their name. I have rang the company that sold us the hardware (who is a very respectable company), and they claim no knowledge of this other company and that they have never sold or given away customer details. How else do these companies get your details and details of your hardware?
Someone at the respectable company is selling customer names. Some people think it's OK to do this for a little pocket money, but I equate it with selling goods out of the warehouse back door. Call up the company and let them know they may have an employee selling customer names.
TW Burger twburger@google.com
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Not knowing the details, maybe the company you purchased the printer gets some products from a 3rd party supplier. If the company you purchased from is respectable, then I would complain to them. If it tarnishes their name, they'll deal with it.
Bert delaVega wrote:
hen I would complain to them.
Yeah I rang them up and they said they would do an internal investigation, but would not look outside the company (so they wont investigate their delivery companies, etc), but they asked me to give them a call if I find out anything.
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon