Another phone scam today.

[safeinOhio]

Recording talks about strokes and falls and how you need a 24 hr monitor. OK, I push one to talk to an agent. Hello, she says my name is Vicky, operator #1365. She ask if I can be reached at the # I'm calling from. I say yes, can you give me a number I reach you at Vicky. She says no "I don't have that". Well I tell her I'm afraid of phone scams and if they don't give you a number to call and get in touch with them it could be a scam. She hangs up.

[MADem]

1. I tell people in assorted languages that I don't speak English.

I figure that gets rid of them and pisses off the xenophobes.

[safeinOhio]

2. Years ago it was furnace and carpet people

I always sounded real interested and then at the end I told them I had to ask my case worker and they'd hang up.

[MADem]

3. If you have a little kid in the house, just hand them the phone and tell them it's Santa! nt

[1StrongBlackMan]

5. That's priceless ...

and cruel to the child ... "Mommy! Santa hung up on meeee! ... What does @#$%^ mean?"

[MADem]

13. Awww, sweetie, the line must have gotten crossed! We'll send Santa a letter!!

Half the time when kids get stuck on transmit they don't hear what's being said on the phone!

[Retrograde]

6. I tell them that in English

confuses them long enough to get away!

[MADem]

12. Ha ha!!!! nt

[safeinOhio]

4. They will never give a number they can be reached at.

If they did you could collect money for violations of the do not call list law. They call from carriers like Magic Jack that can't be traced.

[Dreamer Tatum]

7. That's not a scam, that's someone on a dialer.

What should concern you more is those kids on your lawn.

[johnnyreb]

8. Options to block the criminal telemarketers:

This free service is fantastic:
http://nomorobo.com/

Ooma is a very good Voice-Over-Internet phone service; for $10 month (plus tax of $2-4 bucks a month, depending where you are), it has a "Community Blacklist" feature in which everyone contributes to a database of numbers to block. You have the option for blocked calls to go to voicemail, or hear a tone with "This number has been disconnected...".
http://ooma.com/

A good phone such as the Panasonic KX-TGE series, that can block 250 numbers.

Just by answering these criminal calls, you have verified that yours is a working phone number with a human, so now your phone number can fetch a higher price from other criminals eager to ring your phone and sell your number to yet more criminals!

[Archae]

9. I keep getting "Consumer protection" calls...

I learned quickly that it was &quot Fill in the blank female name) from Card Services."

These companies are scams, they've been caught many times violating do not call lists, deceptive calls, the works.

They pay a fine, close their company and re-open under a different name.

[bigwillq]

10. I hate the card services one

I press the button to talk to a "representative", and kindly ask them to remove my #, and they hang up.
I recently got rid of my house phone, but got a card services call on my cell yesterday. Ugh

[FLyellowdog]

11. Just had a strange call two days ago...

I didn't pay attention to the caller ID when I answered the phone. No one was on the other end so I hung up and then checked my recent calls to find out if I needed to call back.

Surprise, surprise, surprise...the number from which the call originated was MY NUMBER!

I couldn't figure out how my phone called me...so I notified AT&T but they knew nothing about it and the call didn't show up on my phone record.

Long story short...apparently telemarketers have some way of calling people and displaying the number of the person called so the real number won't be recognized.

I hate them.