‘Said all the right things’: Scammers know when your new phone is arriving — and want it

Emily Ames said she and her husband usually don’t exchange gifts for their anniversary, but her husband made an exception this year.

Seeing Ames struggle to store the more than 12,000 photos and videos of their two children on her iPhone, he decided to surprise her with a new phone while he was away on a work trip.

He called her, warning her that the shiny, new iPhone Pro Max 17 with a terabyte of storage was on its way to their Beaver County home.

Somehow, scammers knew it was coming as well.

“The phone was delivered at 10:59,” Ames said. “She called me at 11:26, 27 minutes later.”

The woman introduced herself as “Anna” and said she worked for Xfinity, the mobile carrier Ames used. Anna had Ames’ information, including the type of phone that Ames was supposed to receive.

She informed Ames that Comcast had accidentally sent her a refurbished phone instead of a new phone. In order to avoid an accidental double payment, she told Ames to bring the phone to FedEx within two hours, and the company would send the “correct” phone to her the next day — plus an iPad for her troubles.

“I hadn’t even opened the physical box to the phone yet,” Ames said. “I just didn’t want to be charged for however much the refurbished phone was going to be, plus the brand new phone.”

Ames said it was only after she retold the day’s events to her husband and best friend that it dawned on her she had been scammed.

“She said all the right things,” Ames recalled. “How would somebody that wasn’t Xfinity, that had my Xfinity account, knew that that phone was just delivered?”

Ames had fallen victim to a growing and highly sophisticated scam across the United States. Customers from Xfinity and other carriers, like Verizon, have reported similar phone calls shortly after their new phones arrived. Many of the reports have been made in the past six months.

Comcast includes several warnings in the phone purchasing process, including its email confirmation and on the packing slip, telling customers it would never call to ask for a newly purchased phone back.

Ames said she didn’t see any warning notes as she unboxed the package.

“Customers are advised that if they suspect a potential scam or suspicious activity, they should contact Comcast to verify the legitimacy of any request or other concerning account activity,” a Comcast spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement. “Customers should be cautious of requests for specific forms of payment, phone or device returns, or personal information and can report alleged scams to the Comcast Security Assurance team at abuse@comcast.net, https://internetsecurity.xfinity.com/help/report-abuse, or 1‑888‑565‑4329.”

Across the country, Ashley Portner, of Washington state, said scammers also tried to contact her using the same number they called Ames from, which was reported by two other consumers to Xfinity’s scam alert website page.

She didn’t pick up the call or ship the phone anywhere. She took her phone to the store to swap it out and then — after being told there was no issue — posted a screenshot of their message to her Facebook page as a warning.

“As soon as it hit my doorstep, I had a phone call from a missed number,” Portner said, adding that Xfinity store employees said other customers were coming in with similar queries. “I have concerns about who has my information and how they knew that I was being delivered this phone, and to the almost exact minute.”

Comcast does not typically reimburse scam victims, instead focusing on education. They made an exception in Ames’ case so she could order a new phone.

Ames called on providers to make their warnings more explicit and said she hoped her story could teach other consumers.

“If this were to happen to my grandfather, say, he would have sent that phone back thinking he was going to get the correct one the next day, like they said, and then another day would have passed, and another, and obviously there’d be no phone coming,” she said.

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