Someone calls, belgian number, speak v fast polished french, claim to be from some random organization. They ask repeatedly if you have benefited from your €200 bonus. When you question the organization etc they mumble but keep coming back to the bonus. They had my name.
Same thing happened to my husband in Dec.
We both detected something fishy and hung up.
Has this happened to anyone else? Where can it be reported?
Yes, it is a scam.
You can submit a complain at https://www.ombudsmantelecom.be/nl/
But it won't matter, because usually they are faking the phone number they are calling from.
Hello, yes it’s a scam. There are plenty of call centres based in Morocco , France and Belgium , they use belgian numbers and they try to call Belgian numbers to scam them. Thier goal is to have a very old naive person who trust them and then have their bank details. Unfortunately, lot of old Belgians lose their savings because of those scam calls. Now: some Belgians citizens had created an organisation which succeeded to pass a law: making it possible for anyone to ask by law the call centres to not call them. You can go to their website : www.dncm.be and register your phone number. Once it’s in the list, the call centers can not call you. If they do , you have the right to sue them.
It's good that they have this database. Now you can sue criminals for trying to scam you.
Thank you for this. They have been calling me for literally more than a year, at one point it became mentally challenging. I did everything I could but they didn't stop. They stopped for many months and recently started again, I really feel that I have a stalker.
I just registered my number on this.
Had the same what I did was ask them for my contact info what's my name etc if they knew who I was they should have known my name Wich they didn't made me laugh
The best approach is to simply not pick up. If it's a legit call they'll leave a message and you can assess later. If you answer they'll just flag your number as active in their system so when they resell their database some others will keep on calling you as well.
Yes makes sense in theory but for family reasons I can’t afford to ignore phone calls. (Unless it’s a number from Vanuatu etc.)
I see.... in that case I guess it's just hanging up when you don't recognize the voice unfortunately.
This is r/Brussels, right?
Do you speak dutch? Do you answer the phone with a short neutral question? My favourite is : Hellow? Quite some calls are cut off after this response. Hey? Why didn't he give his name?
Or as effective as the other one: "Met wie spreek ik?”
If they don't speak dutch, sometimes they still prod to go on in French. Doesn't work for me. They will hang up. When I have some minutes to toy with them that's so many minutes this caller cannot fish on someone else. But continue in Dutch and they stop.
Sometimes they pretend to be government. Le service des pensions <That's government. In Belgium, government knows whether to address you in french, German or Dutch>
(Continue in Dutch, don't give my name until they try to verify a name. )
When I finally"realize " that this (so-called) civil servant got the wrong dossier , I ask him/her to pass the colleague who really treats my files
That can take up to 5, 10 minutes. 10 minutes when I ponder about how desperate people are who accept this type of job. And risk not being paid, or only scrap, and when the phish bites.
I don't know about the scammers acting in Belgium and around, but apparently in some parts of the world scams are carried out by people trafficked with false promises of legitimate well paid work, who end up being enslaved. They not only work without payment, but also suffer threats and sometimes torture if they refuse to comply or try to escape:(
Yes 100%. No evidence of this happening in EU countries but massive multi billion dollar industry of scam centres in Asia, mainly myanmar and Cambodia overseen by Chinese criminals.
Yes, I realised fairly quickly it was a scam and know how to react, but just curious how widespread this particular one is in Belgium given that it happened both me recently and my husband a few wks back. And whether it’s worth reporting anywhere.