Earlier this week we had a big noon meeting at our radio station, so I decided to be a nice guy and order pizza's for the staff. 

So I call Papa John's, place our order, and since I was going to pay via credit card, I just read them my credit card over the phone.  The friendly manager took the info and told us our order would be here at noon.   It's all good...

Then...

About 20 minutes later I get a call in my office.  Our office phones here will always display the number calling in (Caller I.D.) but in this instance the number was blank.  I thought it was strange so out-of-curiosity I picked up the phone.

It was a man on the other line from Papa John's who said that thier computer system just went down and wanted to confirm our order.  He asked what I had ordered, then he confirmed my work address and company name.  He then asked for my credit card number to complete the order.

He was very kind, so I tried to play stupid and say "Oh, we'll just give the number to the driver when he gets here..." 
The response was:  "Sir, we need your number to complete the order..."

My response was:  "Oh...okay, we'll I'll just give it to the driver when he gets here..."

His response was:  "Sir, you don't understand, we need your credit card number so we can complete the order and get you your pizzas..."

My response was:  "Well, we'll just pay by cash then when the driver shows up with the pizza.."

His response was:  "Sir, all we need is the credit card number that you just provided us so we can put the order into our system."

At this point, I was getting annoyed and suspicious...

My response was:  "Look, I'm not going to give you a credit card number, I have no idea if this is a legit call, YOU CALLED ME and are asking for my credit card number and I'm not going to give it to you!"

His response:  "I understand sir, you can give the number to the driver when he arrives, thank you goodbye.

The call ended.

So I called back Papa John's and the manager (who took my original order) and he said thier computer system was fine, it DIDN'T go down and that somebody was trying to scam us! 

HA HA HA!!   I felt empowered and smart...I had to cherish it, because I don't have those feelings very often!! :)

My wife used to work at a bank and said that the scammers were "phishing" and were on the Papa John's internal website when the manager was taking our order.  Luckily, programs will display all the information as you type it in, but the credit card numbers turn instantly into stars "*" after you enter them, so that was the only piece of information that they didn't have.  Kinda scary, huh?

LESSON LEARNED:   NEVER...NEVER...EVER Give your credit card number to somebody who calls YOU! 

BTW:  The pizza tasted even BETTER after I knew that I beat the scam!!!