They called me and it was a recording saying an item was charged. A person then picked up and had no clue why I was on the phone with them. It was funny and shows how half-baked some of these are.
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St. Louis used to be the headquarters of several scam car warranty companies. One of my friends used to work at the one mentioned in this article and he didn’t stay around very long. He knew it was a scam and the working conditions were poor. There were other companies like this in St. Louis but US Fidelis took the cake!
The owner even ran a “church” out of the building used as their offices so he could get a tax write off.
Or a police fraternal organization.
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I guess my influence is expanding. Instead of emails from dc, I’m getting calls from Cambodia.
Dating offers?
I know when the police call begging, they always open with the same couple of lines. “ you’re the first person l’ve been able to reach, and I’m not a short person”, yeah real funny. Or “would you please help protect police officers” my response, they already have Kevlar, guns, and a badge that says they can use the guns, do they really need me to help catch the criminals too? They usually hang up at that point.
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One of them out of Omaha or some place is a total scam. I give to the sheriffs association though that is legit and uses the money wisely.
The state assoc not national.
The police/sheriff organizations often set up shop in local flea markets, with uniformed officers on hand, so that’s where I usually make my contributions. Never via a phone call. Usually get some good deals at the flea market, so overall a winner. Next time though I’m gonna ask about this arrest thing, where they hold your car hostage to get you to pay-up for a bail-bond … lol…
Easy to end the scams. Just start fining the service providers.
ISPs and cellular companies aren’t scamming us, criminals are. If the service providers do nothing to lessen scams, then their penalty is that customers find another provider. I almost left my VOIP service after my wife picked up a scam call. They knew they had a live one and called several times every day until the VOIP company figured out how to stop them.
This is what pisses me off about Facebook, PayPal, Amazon, and others. They are just FULL of scams and yet these companies profit from ad revenue and transactions so they don’t care who is using their service as long as they pay.
These services do not remove obvious scams, even when reported. I was recently looking up a GM spider injection on Amazon. This part is about $300, give or take for a reputable one. I was finding them from obvious scammers for $19, $5, and other stupid low prices. Just lookup solid state storage for computers. The normal 8TB Samsung is $699 but then the crap scams are all over for $69. This DOES NOT sell for $69! I really think Big Tech needs to be brought under control about this as people are getting ripped off and badly. Being a tech guy, this makes me just drive down to the local NAPA store and give me their business for the GM spider. The solid state was an odd part unfortunately and not available in my rural area so I had to use Amazon. Other legit sellers couldn’t get it to me fast enough for the job.
Basically, “big tech” is playing to play with the politicians so nothing gets done to bring this under control. It is really bad.
I get calls about the police and they are real pushy. They ask if I will pledge my support. I tell them I will if they send me a packet on how the money is spent. They tell me “Thank you for your time” and hang up. That tells me all I need to know.
I now tell people that I deal with scam victims daily and many are scammed via unsolicited phone calls so now give NOTHING to those just calling me out of the blue. That works as well.
I wonder if the scams calls about student loans that I paid off long ago will stop with this forgiveness deal.
If I am busy, I just get them off the line. If I am not busy, I just waste their time repeatedly and this usually gets them to remove you from the list as they are paying overseas phone charges by the call and minute if they are using a local number but calling internationally. Many are VOIP services in the cloud. They are marketed as services for telemarketers but it is really a “scam in a box” kit as I refer to it as. Everything they need is ready to go and provided.
The scammers have continuous high volumes of calls from each line, which makes a lot of money for the service provider. Their computers could easily pick that out and with a little bit of monitoring determine if the caller is legitimate or not and simply block the calling line. The service providers excuse for not doing this was usually that they were not legally allowed to monitor calls.
Another thing about scam calls for car warranty or otherwise… They often pitch some GREAT DEAL but you have to agree to it RIGHT NOW! My response to this tactic is “If this is such a great deal, I should have some time to think about it and do my research so I know just how GREAT of a deal I am getting. If it is as good as you say and everything checks out, I will be in.” I did this with one and brought up a BBB page on the company. It was a complete scam and I told them I was looking up the page while I was on with them.
They will tell you the deal won’t be valid if you hang up and call back. My attitude is that this is a high pressure sale and wouldn’t be needed if the service was legit. I tell them that this tactic is like popping a fuse in my brain. No amount of convincing will change my no back to a yes. I am done with them if they try this. Car salesmen that do this at dealerships figure out this is the fastest way to get me running for the door, never to return.
The BBB sure isn’t perfect but can serve as a guide to avoid complete scam companies. The BBB itself is a “pay to play” organization and gives bad businesses an A+ rating and accreditation for paying their dues!
I used to talk to these people more but that was probably 15 years ago. Now I just tell them to take me off their list. Sometimes they insist on talking on and trying to convince me. I just set the phone down and let them waste their time now. This costs them money and after going through it several times with me, I get removed from the list.
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That FCC article says:
“The FCC has made combatting unlawful robocalls and malicious caller ID spoofing a top consumer protection priority. By proposing and implementing impactful policy initiatives and pursuing strong enforcement actions, the FCC takes action to protect and empower consumers.“
Yet 4 years later and things are just as bad as then. More governmental “lip service” with no real results. As I said at the beginning of this thread this looks to be just as effective as their “Do Not Call List”. Sounds good, looks good on paper, but ends nothing. A lot if not most of the calls originate from overseas. We are being bombarded and just don’t have the resources to deal with it, and have no jurisdiction overseas and the overseas governments really don’t care. To bring this back to cars, faked auto parts hit the ports every day. Until the resources are freed up to deal with this it will continue. And the with the U.S. being so far in debt we really can’t afford to do anything about it. Sorry end of rant.
The calls are not going anywhere soon . So either don’t answer or just say " Not interested " and hangup .
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I can’t agree more. I personally don’t believe they will ever truely end, EVER! !
I will actually say that my rate of calls dropped after the FCC changes. It isn’t perfect but my phone was almost unusable before. Now it is an average of 1-2 a day.
How big of a problem are the fake auto parts? I assume some are pretty good and others are complete junk and unsafe to use, depending on the part. These fakes are a huge problem from computer storage to clothing, etc. Almost all are coming from China.
Nowadays, I think that most people have Caller ID. If it shows an unknown name and/or a distant area code where I know nobody, or–especially–if it shows no name/no number, I simply don’t answer either my landline or my cellphone.
If somebody is conducting serious/legitimate business, he/she will leave a message. Most of the calls that I fail to answer don’t leave a message, and the few who do leave messages–and are “legitimate”–probably represent less than 5% of messages. In the rare event that someone legitimate leaves a message, I will call him/her back.