Amazon is accusing two companies of “widespread tech support fraud” targeting users of its Alexa virtual assistant and smart speakers.
In a lawsuit filed in a US District Court in Seattle, Amazon alleges the two companies — Robojap Technologies in Washington state and Quatic Software Solutions in Punjab, India — and several of their employees scammed Amazon users by offering to help set up Alexa on their devices through “fraudulent websites and applications.”
The companies used Amazon’s trademarks, as well as false and misleading statements about Amazon and its services, to divert victims away from Amazon’s genuine activation process and customer support.
Robojap did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and two websites belonging to Quatic appeared to be offline. The individual representatives of both companies named in the lawsuit could not immediately be reached for comment.
According to the Amazon complaint, when customers tried to use these websites or apps, they would be shown an animation mimicking the download process, ending with an error message that prompted them to call a phone number for assistance.
When they called, Robojap and Quatic representatives would take remote control of the user’s computer and try to convince them that there were technical issues preventing the Alexa-enabled device from working.
Those claims are also entirely false and fraudulent, and no such issues exist, Amazon said in the complaint, adding that the companies would then “offer services to fix these phony issues, charging customers hundreds of dollars to take the simple steps actually required to activate an Alexa device.” Amazon fully supports their Alexa devices through its own customer care.
Robojap’s website describes it as “the only company focused solely on 24/7 management and backend support of smart home devices.” It also features a disclaimer at the bottom that it “is not affiliated or authorized from any third-party company (including but not limited to Amazon, Dell, HP, AOL, Microsoft, Apple, Norton or any other…company).”
Unfortunately, the user who calls the scammers phone number from the pop-up never sees the website or the disclaimers. Scams like this are still happening all the time so it’s up to us, the consumer, to be aware.
As of this writing, the robojap.com website is still online so I have to assume they’re still trying to scam people out of their hard earned cash.
Amazon is currently seeking damages from the companies on several counts, including trademark infringement, false advertising and cybersquatting. Now that this scam has come to light, we can expect that the other companies listed in the disclaimer will want to hop on the lawsuit as well.
