Robocalls for Registering Businesses with Amazon Alexa: Legit or scam?

Today, our office received a call (from 989-200-8164) with a female-voiced robocall stating that our business wasn't registered on Amazon Alexa and we needed to do so if we wanted to be one of the few businesses recommended by Alexa if someone wanted the names of business in our area and line of work.

Although I didn't have a chance to investigate further at the time of the the call, I've since become curious because the message sounded similar to the ones that claim your Google Business Listing needs to be updated, maintained, etc. that tend to be made by third-party companies with questionable business practices. Doing a site search on "Amazon Alexa" turned up two other numbers that might also have been used by this robocaller: 361-209-8119 and 831-221-9468.

Has anyone else received these calls? Are they legitimate, possibly legit yet suspicious, or something to be avoided, tracked, and reported as appropriate?

As to legitimacy, I doubt it. But there is a very easy way to find out. Simply contact Amazon and ask them.

This scam seems to have taken off since my initial post. The office received a call this morning from 248-509-0799 and the message that was left for us included a callback number of 888-864-4794. The 888 number already has three pages worth of posts, some of which include the numbers from which the posters received calls.

The following mentioned numbers numbers have cross-referenced posts to the above:

• 502-206-1295, and
• 518-201-1225.

The following numbers were mentioned but have posts for calls other than Amazon Alexa as of the time of this posting:

• 214-200-4644, and
• 860-200-2766.

The following numbers were mentioned but have no reports as of the time of this posting:

• 215-297-3765,
• 304-449-3366,
• 412-388-4475,
• 479-208-4454,
• 505-308-0548,
• 509-300-1295,
• 551-202-0633,
• 757-254-0714,
• 779-209-1361,
• 786-686-6378,
• 814-228-2163, and
• 973-295-9281.

Unsurprisingly, those that claim to have called Amazon asking about these calls have posted that they were told these calls aren't legitimate.

Yesterday, we received a male-voiced robocall from 248-826-5964 about our business being part of Amazon Alexa. Choosing to speak to an operator, Mitchell came on the line and insisted her was part of Amazon Alexa. I told him we weren't interested and I suspect the call was like the other ones that have been reported as bogus. I recorded the conversation with Mitchell and I may upload and report it to Amazon if they have a point of contact for spoofing, phishing, and potential misuse of their brand names.

You post certainly could not be important since every one of those number threads is empty, meaning you did not even try to find them and post in the correct threads.

I've been receiving robo calls to my business mobile number for years now and I've reached the boiling point! So, here's what I've experienced, what I've learned and how I intend to battle this:

Types of calls (in order of abuse)=
1. Google Listings (local Calif. number's)
2. Business Loans (from multiple state's)
3. Health Insurance (from multiple state's)
4. Newest: Amazon Listing, Alexa (local Calif. number's)
Note: The number's are always changing!

Research=
1. Once your mobile number has been captured, your number will turn up on multiple telemarketing lists which, are then bought & sold like clockwork.
2. Google search engine automatically ads your mobile number to the account when you use a mobile device; visible while surfing the Web.
3. Google modifies third party call blocking apps; Phone Warrior was modified to allow blocked numbers to leave VM's which, it was not originally designed to do; verified by the developer in 2017. They likely modify other apps?
4. I cleared my cookies daily for sometime now, in the search engine app which, seemed to help a little bit.

Counter measures=
1. Still using Phone Warrior which, does block call's but, spammer's can still leave a VM.
2. Set my Android phone to "do not disturb" mode which, I set to only receive calls from my contact list. Other calls will go to VM which, won't stop spammers from leaving a VM, unfortunately!
3. Removed my number from the Google search engine profile information.
4. Going to use a different search engine from this point forward. (duckduckgo) maybe? This might also be modified by Google?
And, I hope will cut down on the spam emails to my hotmail account by using another engine?
5. Going to continue using my other gmail account (search engine account) which, almost never receives spam; best filtering system out there; oddly enough!
6. I've never included my numbers within social media accounts and I have no plans to change this.
7. The "Do not call registry" is a huge waste of time; the Fed's don't give a crap!

I hope other's will benefit from this information.
Thank you for reading...

Telemarketing lists are rarely traded any more.  Scammers simply program robodialers to call numbers in sequence until they get a nibble.  It's like fishing, except the bait is nearly free, and you can cast thousands of times a day, per line.

The Do Not Call registry actually works very well.  I have not received a call from a *legitimate* telemarketer in several years.  The ones that ignore the DNC registry are the crooks and scammers, and they are going to ignore the law anyway.  Its pretty hard to track down people that are usually out of the country and using fake Caller ID and VOIP systems to avoid being tracked down.

I'd bet RoboNinja is one of those people who thinks the DNC registry is either a call blocker or a magical method to keep him from getting calls.