I wanted to share a recent experience to see if anyone else has encountered something similar.
Recently, I needed to call PayPal to sort out a customer service issue. I used a phone number that had worked for me before and was also recently given to me by Merchant Technical Support. I even double-checked and saw the same number listed on PayPal’s website as a contact point.
So, I called, expecting to be connected to customer support as usual. Instead, I heard a message saying – and I’m paraphrasing here – “PayPal is sorry for the issues you’ve been having with your account, and we’re offering you a $100 gift card to Walmart or Amazon. If you’d like to accept, press one to continue.”
Thinking it might be legitimate because, well, “It’s PayPal,” I pressed one. I got connected to someone with a South Asian accent who asked for my name and address to send the gift card. After I provided that information, they told me I needed to give my credit card details to pay a small processing fee for the gift card to be sent.
Now, PayPal customer service can be hit or miss, so a tiny part of me wondered if this could be real. But the bigger part of me screamed, “Never trust anyone from PayPal with your credit card info over the phone!” I suggested they take the fee from my PayPal account instead. The person on the phone kept insisting, “Miss, please provide your credit card information. It’s just a one-time fee,” getting more and more aggressive, almost yelling. Finally, she just hung up on me.
After this bizarre call, I opened a support ticket for my original issue and mentioned the gift card offer, the phone number, and the weird conversation. The support person confirmed that I had indeed called the correct Paypal Customer Service Number. However, they also stated unequivocally that PayPal never offers gift cards like that. The rest of their response was the typical, generic message about the issue being “forwarded to the proper department for further review.”
Initially, I thought maybe I had dialed the wrong number (I know there are fake numbers floating around on Google). But it was a number I’d used successfully before, and even the support ticket confirmed it was a valid PayPal contact number. So, what’s going on?
Could it be that my previous successful calls were also scams, and they just pretended to be customer support to make this gift card scam seem more believable? Is it possible someone added this scam number to internal PayPal documents by mistake after finding it on Google? Or maybe PayPal changed their contact info, and scammers quickly snatched up the old number?
It’s unsettling to think about how easily scammers can impersonate legitimate customer service, even using numbers that seem to be officially connected to PayPal. This experience really highlights the importance of being extra cautious when receiving unexpected offers, especially when they involve providing personal financial information over the phone. Always be skeptical and verify directly through official PayPal channels if you are ever unsure about the legitimacy of a customer service interaction.
