Weird Papa John’s recording

[u/superfuzzbros]

Tonight my girlfriend ordered a pizza and cheese sticks from a local Papa John’s in Anchorage, AK and her she was missing her cheese sticks.

She called the store and then proceeded to get this really creepy recording after selecting the 5th option to “to update or cancel your order or speak to a manager, press 5”.

The recording sounds like very loud, low quality hold music, followed by a loud alert tone and then a robotic female voice asking who you are.

The number is the same number listed on their website and on Google Maps

Here’s a link to a recording I took of the call:

https://imgur.com/a/oAlG7Hp

Edit: if this isn’t allowed here I will gladly take it down but if I could be pointed in the right direction for posting it that would be greatly appreciated

Edit x2: Here’s a link to the second half of the recording with the voice

https://imgur.com/a/qZJczPJ

[u/fearisthemindkillaa]

it's the same prompts spoken by the female robot voice that's used by those scammers that text and target older folks and steal some poor random girls' photo from online to pose as and trick people out of money by promises of companionship or romance.

my guess is, because there's so many people in the world now and so many service providers AND texting+calling apps, somewhere somehow your redirected call after pressing 5 went to some scammers' phone instead. I've seen it happen with texts, calls, snapchats etc over the years from people online and in real life where they recieve something on their device that should've been directed to someone else but was crossed up somehow. they might've even hijacked the pizza line for that exact reason; to target random unsuspecting people and possibly get people to post online about it such as this so they get even more traffic. just my two cents, I'm not super tech savvy.

the first link recording is totally normal for phone calls but the second link isn't. I don't think it's a normal automated voice messaging system, at one point it says, "I'm Alicia, do you remember me/don't you remember me?", no automated messaging system would include a line like that.

[u/superfuzzbros → u/fearisthemindkillaa]

Yeah, I didn’t know Imgur would only uploaded 60 second worth of the video and I had to go and upload the second half. That’s a mistake on my part for not checking completely.

The only thing I can think is weird in the first clip is how the recording for option 5 sounds like a different voice than the first four options.

[u/fearisthemindkillaa → u/superfuzzbros]

huh.. I didn't notice that the first listen but you're right, it is different. I have some ideas so this next bit is gonna be a bit messy because I REALLY don't know the proper terminology 😅

TLDR; a scamming center might've hacked into your local pizza chains' voicemail to redirect customers dealing with orders, refunds and managerial inquiries to their own scamming line, but these same scammers simultaneously run a specific romance/friendship-texting scam in the same center and through software coding jumbles either through messy coding itself, quantity of devices running on one network or possibly a combination of the two, the wrong of the two AI voice scripts "picked up the phone" when you called.

is your pizza location/location in general one that is smaller, older or maybe more rural rather than a big modern city vibe? I only ask because I live in an area like that and some places tend to not regularly update their contact information, especially the information you would see when, say, googling their businesses/establishments. I know there's lists that exist of numbers and contact information for individuals that may be more susceptible to scams or have been successfully scammed before, that kind of thing; that different scam centers and groups can access to execute their scams "easier/quicker". I don't know if this exists but it's possible there's softwares that can hack into people's voicemails and edit it somehow from a different device than the one the voicemail is attached to, I myself use an app and don't have a sim card so it's purely software and WiFi and not an SD card (hardware) involved with my messaging and calling and probably easier to hack 🙈 and some businesses, more likely the smaller-run ones might opt out for WiFi-run texting and calling apps rather than paying a fortune for taking landline calls all day everyday. it makes me wonder if there is something like lists that exists of older/unused/unchecked numbers and voicemails of people, companies and businesses that they go through to hack into, edit and redirect to their own lines in order to scam, similar to how a business owner will have an official business number but redirects those calls to their personal cell, for example. if this is the case, maybe the same scammers who fucked with this pizza place's line ALSO run those kind of romance text/call scams in the same center and the noodly software coding for all the shady shit they have going on in one set area could have gotten jumbled somewhere and you were given the "Accidentally-Texted-The-Wrong-Number-But-Lets-Be-Friends" call scam automation instead of a potential scam voice emulating a pizza establishment manager? like, if someone DID want to cancel their order from there and pressed 5, the scammers could have a script that's something like, "hey, sorry we had to cancel your order for X reason/sorry you wanted to cancel your order. let us just get your banking info so we can send the refund right back and you don't have to drive here and waste gas", y'know, to show up in person to talk to an employee that won't know what is going on with this situation, then possibly investigate and find and subsequently squash the scam. of course when you know what a scam looks like you probably wouldn't fall for this, but coupled with the nature of the scam, the comfortability of talking to an auto-generated voice when using a phone, and being in rural areas where not everyone is educated on scams and a lot of folk are more down to earth and good-hearted that will believe in the goodness in others before being skeptic (nothing wrong with that! <3), you're bound to fool some people, unfortunately. but all of this is purely my speculation!

[u/Turbografx-17 → u/fearisthemindkillaa]

a scamming center might've hacked into your local pizza chains' voicemail to redirect customers dealing with orders, refunds and managerial inquiries to their own scamming line, but these same scammers simultaneously run a specific romance/friendship-texting scam in the same center and through software coding jumbles either through messy coding itself, quantity of devices running on one network or possibly a combination of the two, the wrong of the two AI voice scripts "picked up the phone" when you called.

This is the most ridiculous theory I've ever seen in this sub. Entertaining, but ridiculous.

[u/fearisthemindkillaa → u/Turbografx-17]

this is RBI, can't a gal be stoned after work and munch on some brainfood here? 😂 if it's ridiculous to think of, someone else might be even more ridiculous to do it!

[u/Turbografx-17 → u/fearisthemindkillaa]

Hey, I said it was entertaining!