Does The No Call Telemarketing Not Work Anymore?

Rickochet

We still have a land line at our house. For years while registered with our state and federal No Call sites and it seemed to work very well. Recently things are going nuts. We are starting to get more calls later in the evening as late as 10 at night.

pellmell

The problem is calls to consumers who have unwittingly given their permission to receive telemarketing calls from credit card "parteners" by not using the opt-out option. The default is opt-in. Why would anyone want unsolicited calls.

potbunker

The Do Not Call registration is worth zilch.

Telemarketers and collection scams are now using cell phones or disconnected #'s that appear as a call from your local area, ie. what appears as the guy next door to get you to pick up. Don't!!!!!

How do I know?

I called one of my credit card companies re: a disputed charge. The person I spoke with was in the scummy business until her conscience prevailed and sense of disgust. This was her introduction to "telemarketing." She confirmed this process. The person who trained her made $100,000 -$150,000 a year in salary and bonuses. This trainer, used a cell phone, which she changed regularly with other staff, and would get under her desk so she could use profane, abusive and threatening language. All of course illegal tactics as I was trained, when I was in the credit and collection industry years ago.

I also called back the "IRS" one night and a guy answered "yo, IRS agent!" True story! Quickly he confirmed it was all a scam, he got bonuses, switched numbers daily, and didn't care about talking with me for an extended period as he was "a little high at the moment." About a 15 minute conversation from overseas.

Use:
nomorobo.com Got this tip from an FGI discussion. It does work, unless it is from a cell, one ring and gone. I reported online to NOMOROBO a cell # that was being used as a false front, and I actually got a call and a message from NOMOROBO to get more details. Free service. Sign up online. They offer a cell phone service, new, but there is a charge to block scammers on your cell phone.
your phone provider (Comcast for me allows you to block calls)
your home phone often has a call blocking feature you can use

The American Red Cross has been and is the worst. I have a bazillion of their numbers blocked via my home phone feature. Still we get calls and when I Google the #, people who also received a call from that number and answer it, report it as the Red Cross.

If they don't leave a message I Google the number or do #67 to block my number, supposedly and risky, and call them back. Almost always, no company name is given or the number is not in service.

Good luck and NEVER answer if you don't know the caller. Often it is a computer merely searching for a working number which gets shared, opening the flood gates.

puttnfool

I actually enjoy talking to the scammers. I had one guy on the phone for like 30+ minutes one night after he called me to tell me I qualified for a $14k grant from the US Treasury. Spent 20 minutes or so one night trying to sell a telemarketer some "widgets" and "thingamajigs".

If I don't wanna talk to them, I just hang up, but I'd never block them across the board because I get so much entertainment from them.

Rickochet

My biggest issue with them is them calling at inopportune times or very late at night. My wife has health issues and goes to be early. There is almost always at least one call that comes in after she is asleep and it wakes her up.

SVonhof

Rickochet
Turn off the ringer in that room?

There is no way to truly avoid it these days with all the number spoofing they do. As has already been stated, the DNC list is worthless until the Fed's figure out a way to take the companies down that are doing it all. And since many of them are out of the country, it won't be easy.

At this point, we just don't answer the phone unless we know who it is.

potbunker

+1 on the phone in the room?

If one of us is not feeling well and goes to bed earlier, we collect any phone that might be a disturbance.

When the other one hits the sack, the phones are returned should an emergency call come through.

I read this is the #1 consumer complaint and legislation etc. is being considered to reduce the calls AND the millions of $$$ they rip off from consumers. They just busted some guy in Florida. The number of daily calls he / organization made and profits were astonishing. International authorities also busted a big ring of telemarketing scammers earlier this year.

Therefore, please contact your state and national representatives.

PA-PLAYA

Only have cellphones in the family. Don't answer calls that I'm not familiar with. If they don't leave a voicemail explaining the validity of their call - they simply get put in the "ignore this number" column.

Still enjoying a landline-free existence. 🙂

Ack8236

They seem to be hitting cell phones as much as landlines these days. They "spoof" the caller ID to look like a local number. The city I work for even had to put a message out that they were not calling people for payments. Scammers had set up a spoof so that the caller ID said the name of the city and showed the city's actual phone number. If I don't recognize the number, I do not answer. When the city calls, it goes to voice mail also.

potbunker

Ack8236

That's disgusting. There has to be a way to counteract using a legit # associated with a name.

Now that you mention it, we are getting more calls from "people we don't know."

In fact, last week I got a call on my cell saying i had just called her "30 seconds ago."

I said no and she kept insisting.

When I looked at my incoming and out going calls, she wasn't on the out going list.

PA-PLAYA

Well... it seems pretty simple to me. If they're not someone who you owe money to or someone within your contact list - "ignore" and "block."

Not had an issue in the 4+ years I've been landline free. 😉

I know some people have yet to break those landline chains, for whatever reasons. I broke those chains 4 years ago and have never looked back.

If I don't recognize the number, I simply don't answer. It's not overly complicated.

potbunker

PA-PLAYA

Going landline free once we retire and move back to Virginia!!!!!