The chap said that there had been a fraudulent transaction and asked did I know someone called James McAllister (or something like that, the exact name doesn't matter). "Oh, yes," I said, "He's a friend. He was staying here for a week."
The scammer tried to carry on with his script, but I insisted that James was a good friend and I'd ordered something for him. Did I know, asked the scammer, that it had been delivered to an address in London?
"Yes," I replied, "It was a gift. You can send gifts to other addresses. I've often done it."
He wasn't going to give up easily and then asked me to say what address it had been sent to.
"I'm not giving you the private address of a friend," I said. "As you work for Amazon, you will have the address there."
He was stumbling by now, but gave me an address and I agreed that that was where James lived.
At this point the pretence started to fall apart as he must have realised that he was way off script and not getting anywhere. It's at this point that they start getting frustrated and angry, so he accused me of guessing and I told him that I knew he was a scammer, that I just wanted to waste his time and that now I'd had enough and was hanging up. Which I did.
I found it highly amusing and I hope I put him off his stride for the next couple of calls.
