Hewlett Packard (HP) SCAM ALERT!!!!

This happened to us. This is not anecdotal. It did not happen to my brother’s cousin’s, uncle’s, girlfriend. It happened to us.

I am having problems getting a working magenta cartridge for my HP printer. I have ordered 4 from 4 different places, all bad.

I contacted HP and did an iChat with someone. She could not help and passed me onto “tech support”. She said if they did not take my call in 2 minutes I should call a number that she gave me. I did notice that the number she gave me was different from the tech support number she was forwarding me to.

Of course they did not call me in 2 minutes, so I called them. I talked to Paul Smith who was in California, although he did sound like he was in India and that was probably not his name.

He asked to screen share (which always makes me uneasy) but I let him. He ran some diagnostics and told me that I had a Trojan horse on my home network (IP address) and that all 10 of our products were infected and that was the problem. And from the diagnostics my computer was due to crash soon and I would lose all my information.

I had never heard of such a thing but then I don’t know why I can’t get a working magenta cartridge either.

Eventually he said that he had a product that could fix it… 1 year for $249.99 and 3 years for $369.99 etc.

By then I asked John to get on the call. It had been an hour; Paul Smith was aggressive and would continuously talk over me. Thankfully John stepped in and talked over him and ended the call.

This morning I called Apple to ask if this is a scam. YES IT IS.

The Apple guy said.

1. Apple products almost never get a virus because of their encryption.

2. You cannot get a virus ON your IP network.

3. Apparently the fact that I screen shared did not mean he could steal info. Still not a great idea.

4. BUT if I had bought his product and given him a credit card that would jeopardize my credit and allow him to get banking info.

So beware. Share this if you want to. That is why I am posting this.

If someone from from HP sees this plz contact me at hello@outside-the-line.com, I have more information for you. Oh yeah and I would like a working magenta cartridge.