Refusal of Service Saves Couple $1,000

(Quincy, Ill)--When is refusing service the ultimate customer service??  When the customer is about to fall prey to a scam...  That situation happened in Quincy recently.

Police say a couple received a call from a man posing as their grandson.  He stated he was injured in an accident at a major university in Illinois, and had caused damage to a house.  He requested the couple wire $1,000 to Lima, Peru where the owner of the house supposedly lived.  The caller even knew the grandfather’s middle name.

The grandfather noticed when he called his grandson's number back from his landline phone, the person posing as the grandson answered. However, there was no answer when the grandfather attempted to call from a cellphone. The same situation also occurred when calling the police officer supposedly assigned to the accident. In fact, the grandfather discovered the contact number for the police officer was invalid when calling it from a cell.

Even with these discrepancies, the couple still went to a County Market in Quincy to Western Union the money to Peru.  However, the associate refused to wire the money, telling them it was a scam.

The couple had been told by the person posing as the grandson not to contact the grandson's father.   The couple decided it was time to check with dad and discovered the grandson was fine and there had been no such accident!

Police say the scammer apparently used a cellphone app to spoof the victims and even answer calls from numbers that were not theirs.