Problems with Scam calls

What am to do, we are on the due not call list since 2006 but still receive several call each day
In the last 3 months we receive about 3 call a day. Some want to give up money,free life alert, $3000 in free groceries etc.
Today we got 3 calls about our computer service, Indian accent says something is wrong with our Window account., I tell them we don,t have a computer and they usually hangup. How do we get off all these lists. ?
We don,t have caller ID. The caller today even knew my wifes name.
What has happen , have I clicked on something on the computer or what.?

Thanks
Robert in MD.

Give the numbers to the phone company. They may be able to block them.

Can you cancel landline and get cell phone-if not change your number.

Yeah, me too on the "DO NOT CALL" LIST, still getting unwanted calls. At least the political calls have died off since November. We get several you mention. Medical alert, free cruise, your medical order ready to ship, lower interest on credit cards...... Unfortunately, charities, politicians, and several others don't have to confirm to the do not call rules. Unfortunately, many others are flying in the face of the rules. Government is very slow to act on rule breakers, although I have heard of some significant fines levied. A lot of these calls are computer generated, and even having unlisted numbers doesn't get them off your back. I sure don't have any solution, short of getting rid of your phone.

Billy, he doesn't have caller ID, No numbers.

Land line does not even have a phone on it just keep it for the DSL for internet. I get very few if any scam calls on my cell phone and have caller ID as standard plan.

The do not call list is a joke. There is no real enforcement to violators of the list. It all was just a "feel good" bill that congress passed to make you think they had done something.

Actually because no treaty was passed by the UN and ratified by them anyone outside the US can call you whenever they want. The "do not call" law only affects companies operating inside the US. Now I hate these calls as much as anyone. Telemarketers were pretty well paid. So all this feel good law did was cost jobs across the US.

It wouldn't really be a problem except we have been conditioned to answer the phone when it rings.

Rick

Robert, since you have had this problem for 8 years, I wonder why you don't have caller ID by now? That is the simplest way to filter calls. In my case, it got to the point where most of my calls were the junk calls you mention, or at least it seemed that way. I finally had enough, cancelled my landline and got a cell phone. I gave the number to my family and friends and any others that I talk to often. I stored their numbers in my cell, so now if a call comes in from a number that is not in my phone, I don't answer it. If they really want to talk to me, they can leave a message. This has worked out really well for me.

How about just saying NO to them. Then request that they put your number on their "do not call" list. For the most part, they will leave you alone once you ask for them not to call you. I have been doing it for years, and it has mostly stopped the nuisance calls. I mostly keep the land line so that any old acquaintance that wants to look me up can do so. Also, it costs less to have phone AND internet than to have internet alone. Go figure.

I have started a fun approach to the sales pitch calls. We were getting the same ones nearly everyday, Medic Alert and Credit card services, and I got tired of it. I started keeping them on the line asking questions as long as I figured I could then telling them I was not interested, but they kept calling everyday wasting my time, so I decided I would waste theirs for a while. That was my last call from Medic Alert, but it took two times to stop Card Services. One reply I got from Card Services salesman was "FOCK YOU."

The sad part is that Medic Alert is a good company and provide a valuable service, but someone has made the decision to contract with one of the phone calling companies and people are going to be so unhappy with them they will not use them.

Rick, please tell me you aren't serious....loss of American jobs??? Does that mean that you LIKE having those goofballs call you up at dinnertime and trying to hard sell you a time share or some other thing that you neither need or want???
I will not mourn the loss of any telemarketer job. Here or overseas. The operators of telemarketing companies have lost all respect for the privacy of the individual and every last trace of common sense and good manners. I politely tell the callers NO, and politely tell them to please not call back. If they get aggressive, I will get a bit more assertive, and finally hang up. I feel that they are indeed trying to make a living, and do not need abuse from me, but I also expect a decent amount of respect for my wishes to be left alone.

Well, JD, actually there is some level of enforcement. If you contact the FCC either online or by voice line, they will take your information and whatever evidence you have - like numbers, ID of company calling, etc. After a threshold number of complaints are received, they will contact the offender and levy fines. They will NOT do this on a single complaint. I got this straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. I had one that was becoming a problem. Got to talk to a high level sup[ervisor. Learned a lot from that call.

The part I find even funnier about Oldtanker's post is that he thinks that telemarketers are "well" paid. LOL

Simple, if you don't recognize the voice just hang the phone up. You don't need to listen or talk to them.

I remember my dad years ago saying to one..."what part of no don't you understand?" I guess they told him they had to hear it at least 3 times. If it was that easy you can just say "no...no...no" lol

Even if you are on the do not call list, political calls and charity calls are exempt. Also any company you have done business with or a subsidiary of their may contact you.

It is not really a do not call list.

If it is a live person instead of a recording, I talk to them and come up with some way to mess with their mind.

Had one persistant fellow, from Africa I think, that kept calling. Finally I asked him if had intimate relations with his goat that morning? He hung up and never called again.

Quit talking to them. If they have any idea they can be conversational with you they will keep calling. My routine is when they ask for Mr. xxxxx, I say, "May I ask who is calling please?" when they respond unfavorably my next response is, "Would you please put this number on your do not call list?" THEN, [u:654c4848f0]no matter what they may begin to say[/u:654c4848f0] I say "thankyou" and hang up.

Jim, we had a telemarket place near here. I know some of the people who worked there. They were getting 1 and 1/2 what the box stores were paying to start plus bonuses and decent bennies. I remember the ads. x amount starting, sign on bonus, 1st raise at the end of training and then again at 90 days. In 98/99 they were making about 2X minimum wage starting. For an unskilled job that was pretty decent wages. The place held on to right after 9/11 by doing follow up calls for an insurance company. A community of about 14,000 lost about 300 jobs when the call center closed. A young guy who is a friend of my son lost a full time gig that was paying 17 an hour plus bennies and bonuses when they locked the doors in 02.


JD no I didn't like all the calls and it was getting to the point of being stupid but knowing people who were devastated by the lost wages puts things in a different light.

Rick

You're talking to them!
We are trained to hang up on someone is very impolite but that what you have to do.
Everyone that answers the phone must commit to just hang up when you recognize the pitch.

The answer to your problem is simple. Get a caller ID set up with an answering machine or an answering service and then use it. Right now you are being called because they know that they have a "live one" who will answer the phone. That is noted in their files. If you get an answering machine/service, the people who really need you will leave a message, the telemarketers usually will not and the number of times that they call you will eventually go down.
I have a mom who is 86, has a hearing problem, and lives by herself. She needs her phone, but was tired of all the trash calling her. This is what we had to do. She has thanked me repeatedly for setting that up.
BTW, I'm on the Do-Not-Call list also. It doesn't help. We have to have a phone because of my wife's work. Otherwise, it would be cell phone only and I'd have the land line ripped out.

Like everyone else is saying "join the club". Pretty much everyone today has had a phone with built in caller ID and answering machine for the last twent years. You can look if you are inclined to see if you recognize the number or just let it take the message and pick it up if it is someone you know. You should have gotten it before you got internet.

I have caller ID. If I don't recognize a number, I let it go to voice mail. Scammers usually don't leave messages.

Thanks Ray. You miss things when your old and slow.

My son was a telemarketer. He made so much I had to support him.

Yup. I have a current add on GL for the local Amish sawmill.... All the FREE sawdust you can handle - just come and get it. Did I mention FREE? Well got an email from some goat plucker who wanted to send me a check and his shipper would be by to pick it up this week.......

and one of the biggest offenders:
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2015/01/court-grants-partial-summary-judgment-ftc-case-against-dish

(quoted from post at 06:53:06 01/25/15) My son was a telemarketer. He made so much I had to support him.

Click to expand...

Of the 2 I know of they both hired full time and both paid well over minimum wage. I've heard of some that didn't pay much but know no one who worked for the lower paying companies. I do know that when they passed the current laws thousands of jobs either went away or went overseas. In 02/03 knowing someone who last a 15+ an hour jobs changed my perspective. Had the companies used some common sense they could have avoided the current laws. Plus add in that a telemarketer is off shore there is no way for the government to enforce the laws. So we still get unsolicited calls. Then if you have had any business with a company or it's affiliates they can still call even if you are on the list.

Just 2 of the people I know who lost their jobs when the marketer closed here one was a married guy with kids who went from earning enough that his wife could stay home with the kids and a young single woman, no kids who was making enough to be buying her own home. A nephew also worked there part time, his choice, he could have been full time if he wanted it, who relied on my BIL for food and a roof over his head. He was just working for spending money.

Rick

Old Geezer nailed it. Some phones you can block there number. You can try answering in some forign language (learn a couple greetings) Get a new phone and program numbers in it Like aunt Mary 212 212 4444 and it will come up when she calls. They rarely leave a message and when they do its an automated spiel.

About two years ago, I finally realized that the DNC system are not smart enough, or have the resources to do very much.
And why would the Land Line people want to stop these calls when they are making far more money from them then you?
I dropped my Land Line and have never missed it!
I have two cell phones and both numbers are registered. When I occasionally get a scam call, I stop the call and immediately look the number up on Google.
If it was indeed a scam call, I file a complaint with DNC and enter all my information.
Oh--by the way, if you start getting calls from the[b:e4cb38b77a] National Institute for Cancer Research[/b:e4cb38b77a], You will get a phone call several times a day with different numbers, sometimes your phone number.
DNC has never stopped them!

Just got a call the other day with my own name and number on caller ID. It only rang a few times and quit. Interesting I thought. Also, got a call one day with local plummer's name and number. It wasn't him.

I've seen this discussed many times here. It surprises me that people keep thinking that the Do Not Call list will fix all their problems.

#1 Let me put this in terms 90% of the people here will understand. If they passed a law that made gun ownership illegal do you expect gun crime to go down? In essence scammers don't care that it's illegal to call you!

#2 Keep in mind laws are not perfect in the opinion everyone at the same time. This one was written so charities and political campaigns do not have to abide by the Do Not Call list--good or bad?

#3 Also keep in mind that like all laws there are what some might call loop holes and technicalities. The best one here is they can legally call you if they have a "business relationship" with you. So, what's a "business relationship"? It might be you opened a banking account at Local Bank Inc. a subsidiary of Global Investments and Life. Somewhere in pages of privacy disclosure agreements you agreed to when you opened the account, you acknowledged that everyone under the Global Investments and Life group can contact you with offers and promotions.

#4 Companies are allowed time to process you request not be called (not hours, it's days if not weeks) and they only have to check the Do Not Call list every so often.

So:

Legal minded businesses will not call you unless they can find a loop hole allowing them to--and they will look for a loophole. If requested they will stop calling you within the legal window they are required to do so.

Illegal operations will call you any time they want. They like recordings because it's voice spam. They contact 1000s of people and the machine will sort out the best time of day to reach a human at your house. Even if they can't sell you something your number is valuable. They will sell lists to other operations. X dollars for a list of numbers. Three times that for numbers that they were able to get a human to answer on. And so on. If they get VM or an Answering Machine it's someone's number. If they get a person it's an even better number.

The computer scam calls are in a league of their own. We aren't talking about Americans making these calls. They are Indian, Nigerian, or whatever and the person is most likely doing whatever work they can to get enough rice to feed their families for the day. They probably make pennies of commission if they can hook someone and make big money for their boss.

The how:

If you don't know by now it's time to learn. Caller ID doesn't mean a thing when it comes to identifying the caller. With most calls being done over the internet (VOIP) you just buy a number in the location you want it to be associated with and then from anywhere in the world make calls from that number. To make it worse there are many ways to change the number people will show on peoples caller id unit to anything they think will make you pick up the phone faster (your own number, no number, a reputable company's number, a number local to you, a number with not enough digits, a new number every time, etc.)

Why can't the government stop this:

First off I thought we were for self reliance and smaller government--why are we crying to them? As the government is law based they have to find proof beyond a reasonable doubt that this happened as you said and that no loopholes applied and track down and prove a certain person is the responsible person... Well, you can see how it's really hard to do. And if they figure out some syndicate in Nigeria is doing this? What are they supposed to do call in the Marines?

What's worked for me:

While over the last 4 years I've seen a couple hundred different numbers used by spammers most will use the same number for quite awhile.

- Get caller id.
- Get a device that blocks calls based on caller id if that functionality is not available from your phone service. Block any number that you don't want to hear from again.
- Sign up for "Anonymous Caller Rejection", such that callers with a private or unknown number are played the recording, "Your call was completed however the party you called is not accepting call from callers who do not allow delivery of their caller ID information. Please hang up and call back with your caller ID information unblocked.") This is one group of callers that you don't have to think about again.

It will not stop the problem completely but it will get better.

Lastly,

Don't think for a second that a cell phone will stop the callers. Do you really think they will say, "Oh we can't call this guy on his cell." They don't care if it's a cell or land-line. The more you use your cell number the more likely it will be picked up and put on a list.

While being careful where you post your number will help it's not an assurance you will not get calls.

Once on an illegal marketers list it's almost impossible to get off. Remember they like selling and buying list of numbers.

As for callers knowing your personal info, public records contain your number, address, age, occupation, relatives names, vehicle info, etc. (it's called public for a reason) and there is a big legal and illegal business in trading this info. Ever try to set up a bank account online? They'll ask you challenge questions (multiple choice) to establish your identity. Things like: Which of the following vehicles do you own? In which county did you live in 1994? Which of the following people is a relative of yours? With which financial institution is your mortgage currently serviced? In what city were you born? What is the color of your car? And these aren't questions you've told them the answers to before--they bought this info from a service that harvests info from public records! And you better hope they got it right or you'll never convince them you are who you say you are.

YOUR NOT ALONE--JOIN THE CLUB!

If your feeling freaky press whatever to speak to a guy and tell them hang on you have to get your son/father/wife/brother/whatever. Yell a name down the hall, sit the phone down, wait 15 minutes, hang the phone up, block the number.

Talk kinda strange and try to get them to have phone seks ......that results in a quick hangup.....so far anyway.

Just pretend you are hard of hearing. Whenever they say something answer WHAT??? they soon hang up.