Question about VOIP - Another Vanity

[Jamestown1630]

I have a question for other users of VOIP.

Over the last couple of years, we've encountered several businesses/services that will not approve us or accept our orders because we use VOIP for our phone system. We've used it for ten years, but this problem has only shown up in the last 2 years.

(We don't do any business at all on our cell phones; in our situation, they are mainly for emergencies. But some places don't accept those numbers either, because they are TracFones, and not some major telecom provider.)

Has anyone else encountered this? Our phones work fine for our uses and we are certainly not going to change what works to be 'accepted' by some company; but this issue has been troublesome.

Thanks in advance for any responses.

[catnipman]

cellphones suck, esp. in areas of sparse coverage like the vast areas of the midwest, rocky mountain states, and the great rural bulk of the nation on general ...

VOIP, though, generally gives fine quality, and hooked up to a gateway connected to a base-station with a plethora of wireless handsets works just as well as a copper pair, even better if the copper pairs are really old and crappy and buzz like crazy any time there’s heavy moisture ...

we actually have all three, including even an old-fashioned handset connected to a copper pair that requires no external power, so during power outages during blizzards we still have good voice connection to the world ...

[MD Expat in PA]

I still don’t understand why most companies we deal with have no problem with it, and a few do. And the few are still very big, well-known companies.

I can't answer that question except that the type of fraud in the YT video I posted about a vendor scam and the story of the previous company I worked at where the AP manager was fooled by a legitimately “looking” spoofed email and a VOIP phone number - a scammer pretending to be one of our vendors who successfully re-directed our ACH payments to the scammer’s bank account, is on the rise.

If a company has been burned before in a scam involving a VOIP number, they may be much more cautious opening a new account with a purchaser with a VOIP number if they can’t readily verify your identity and location and especially if you ask for payment terms, but even if you want to pay by CC or by check/COD.

Again, the problem with VOIP numbers is that you can pick any area code you want, even if you are not physically located in that area code, even if you are in a foreign country, and verifying the identity of the person or business with the VOIP number can be difficult if not in many instances, near impossible and that’s why scammers always use VOIP numbers.

And the added red flag of otherwise using only TracFones – FWIW TracFone recently had a major security breach where their customers were unknowingly switched to other providers and their numbers were stolen and re-directed by “bad actors”.

https://www.androidheadlines.com/2022/01/thousands-of-tracfone-users-had-their-numbers-secretly-switched-to-other-carriers.html

https://socialcatfish.com/scamfish/voip-number-what-are-voip-numbers-and-how-do-scammers-use-them/

I can tell you that at least once a week if not more, I get an email from a spoofed email account; someone pretending to be an employee wanting to change their PR direct deposit, someone pretending to be one of our executives who is in an “very important and highly confidential meeting” who “urgently” needs me to send them PR or other financial data, or someone pretending to be one of our vendors. At another previous job I started getting emails that appeared to be from ADP who was our PR service provider, asking me to click on a link to update/confirm our banking information, but I was savvy enough to recognize it was a phishing scam.

And these scammers often include a phone number to text or call back to for confirmation and I can guarantee it’s always a VOIP number.

I wish I could tell you how to solve your problem. I can’t. But consider the other side.

I don’t know what type of business you are in but let’s say you get an email from what appears to be from a well-known company but one you haven’t done business with before that also includes a phone number with a local area code, and they are wanting to purchase goods or services from you, a large order that you’d be happy to get.

But they want to open net-30 credit terms or pay in advance, a deposit via ACH and want your banking information - your company’s routing and account number.

Or they want to pay in advance via a check - a good faith upfront deposit and payment including estimated shipping costs. But when you get the check, it’s for a lot more than your invoice and they ask you to send them a check back for the difference but by the time your bank notifies you their check is no good, which can sometimes take many days if not weeks even as your bank initially credited your account as if the check had cleared, you’ve already sent the scammer money - this is also a very common scam.

But before you fulfill the order, you do some due diligence and call the number and speak to the owner – John Smith but he sounds a bit West African or Asian, so maybe you get suspicious and hang up. Good for you, or not, as it may have been legitimate….but probably not.

But these scammers learn and adapt all the time on what does and doesn’t work and often recruit local people, money mules or re-shippers, who are often Americans, some who are even previous scam victims who are trying to recoup some of their lost money back and who will get a small cut from helping them scam you.

If you get an email from a company wanting to purchase from you, do you know what to look for in a spoofed email, slight misspellings, etc.? If they provide a phone number that appears to be a local number, would you want to be able to verify that number is legitimate and belonging to the person or company they say they are?

That you say you do not understand this, makes me concerned you are a ripe victim for being scammed yourself.