Big Time Clocks Bogus 800 Number and Gift Card Scam Reno Internet

This company may be involved in a scam that attempts to acquire customer's debit card numbers under the pretext of being a random winner of a $100 gift card to Wal-Mart, Best Buy or Target.

 

I was searching online for an LED Digital Clock to time 5K and 10K races. The search led to me to bigtimeclocks.biz, which had a pretty extensive online catalog of LED Digital Clocks, and the lowest prices I found anywhere on the web.

 

The website does not list a company address. It did however, provide an email to contact for information, and an 800 number.

 

* I immediately contacted the company by email, and received very little information in response to several questions. There was no contact information provided with the email response -- not even a name of the person responding, much less a phone number or business address.

 

* The next day, I called the 800 number listed on the website -- 1-866-346-5106 -- and was told that I qualified for a $100 WalMart gift card and to press "1" to take advantage of the offer. There were no other options provided to refuse the offer and be transferred immediately to the company.

 

I talked to the representative for the gift card, and ultimately he needed my debit card number to pay for the postage needed to deliver my gift card to me. I did not provide my debit card number.

 

I had dialed the 800 number twice, thinking I had initially dialed the wrong number. After contacting bigtimeclocks.biz by email (again), the mysterious person gave me the same 800 number, which I tried and again was told I had to press "1" to hear the gift card offer. I hung up, waited five minutes and dialed the 800 number again; this time, I was taken immediately to a voice mail message that indicated I had reached Big Time Clocks.

 

I was told by the person in email that they do not have a store in Reno, NV, but only a fulfillment center that ships products. There was no location to which I or a friend could go to see a real person associated with this company. After indicating to the person with the email account that his company may have been victimized by a scam taking place, he got very combative/defensive. I contacted three different running Clubs in the Reno/Sparks area, and they had not heard of this company nor recall ever purchasing clocks from them in the past.

 

The very odd part of this experience is that the person in email never did share his/her name, would not give me a direct phone number (non-800) to the company, and would not provide an address for the company.