There is a sad downside. People who fall for it because they're mentally challenged.
My aunt is in the mid stages of Alzheimer's. My cousin has had to intercede for her after she wrote checks for bills she did not owe due to scammers mailing her bills. Now, he lives with her so as to intercept her home phone from calls like this. She misplaced her cell phone last year and it has yet to be found. Battery dead, there's no chance she'll get a call that way because the service was also cancelled by my cousin.
We got a call today on our cell. Oh, how wonderful! Zero percent interest on our MasterCard. Press 1 now to take advantage of this offer.
So I do, so I can tell them not to call anymore. And this after the recording said, due to our outstanding credit history and paying our current MasterCard on time we're now entitled to this outstanding offer!
One small point. We don't have a MasterCard.
We don't have any credit cards.
So I press 1 and this guy, who sounded much like the caller in the video with the police officer, answered and right away I said, I'd like you to put our number on your don't call list please.
"You don't want zero percent on your MasterCard?"
I had to educate him about that and then made the request again.
Interestingly enough, and we found this works, because these callers are all in foreign countries, if you use foul language in telling them not to call you again, they do stop. When the first request of mine doesn't work, I hand the phone over to hubby. He's good at that second prong of the attack.
Funny, that's how we know cursing them out works. They're not use to that kind of language. And when they don't really know English that well and all of our , shall I say, colorful expletives, they apparently become confused and flag us because they're scared.
I use to work with a guy who got a call for the umpteenth time from the same company offering a home warranty, again. He asked the caller/scammers name, wrote it down and addressed him by that before he said anything further. Which all culminated in his telling the caller the call was being recorded. That the caller had telephoned an agent with the American Department of Homeland Security, and on his official cell phone that was issued him by our government. And after the call completed, the company calling, which he'd gotten the name of also, and Mr.so and so, were going to be investigated and their fraud pursued by relevant federal agencies for fraud against citizens of our Homeland.
Have you ever heard a scammer stutter in a foreign language? Gene did.
Oddly, he was never bothered again. By any cold call scammers. That was four years ago.
Gene is actually a DM for Macy's.