Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

March 18, 2013

Airtel wants to pick up cash payments from your house… Scam or Real?

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 11:31 PM

I got a call today from a guy claiming to be calling on behalf of Airtel, telling me that the payment for my Cellphone was due and that I needed to make the payment ASAP. So I told him that I would make the payment online later in the day once I got back to my desk (I was at work). Then this guy tells me that “that would take up to 2 days to process” (??) and that I needed to make the payment immediately so he would come over/send someone over to pick up a cash payment for the amount due.

My immediate reaction was “Are you serious???” Do you really think I would hand over cash to someone who just claims to be from Airtel instead of using the online payment which is faster, more convenient, trackable etc? Even if it takes up to 2 days for the payment to process (which is nonsense, as I have seen the amount reflected in my account in a few hours at the most) I would still make the payment online, or at a proper Airtel outlet.

When I talked to some co-workers about this, one of the counter-arguments I heard was that “they will be carrying a Airtel ID”. Yes, they will be carrying an ID. How do you know it’s a valid Airtel ID? It will take someone who knows what they are doing a couple of hours at most to create an ID that looks reasonably official and valid. How many times have you looked at someone’s ID really carefully?

Anyways, I told him to go away and that I would make the payment online. I wonder if other people have been receiving similar phone calls.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

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