What do you do with spam phone calls?

Pollycat

annabanana82 said:

My mobile warns with suspected spam calls so I just press the end button and block

So does mine.

Very few people have my mobile number and although a number of retailers/couriers have been provided with it, I get very few calls that may be spam.

Ditto for our landline.
We have an answerphone and just leave it to ring if we don't recognise the number.
If somebody doesn't leave a message, they don't want to talk to us very much.
I check the number on 'who called me'.

I really don't understand people who have 'fun' by wasting their own time, regardless of how altruistic their reason may be. 

molerat

Pollycat said:

Ozzig said:

As above, have some fun...

I'd rather not waste my time having 'fun' at someone else's expense.

As posted above:

DullGreyGuy said:

You dont discourage them... in a lot of cases, given ambulance chasers etc get tarred with the same brush, its an off shore call centre somewhere and its just someone doing their job. Its probably a horrible job to have, I know I did my time doing outbound telesales and I wouldnt wish it on anyone, and they'd love to have a better job but have families to feed etc. 

Those taking a job breaking the law receive no sympathy from me, would you be nice to someone breaking in to your car ?  They get a straightforward " f off and stop calling me"

Pollycat

molerat said:

Pollycat said:

Ozzig said:

As above, have some fun...

I'd rather not waste my time having 'fun' at someone else's expense.

As posted above:

DullGreyGuy said:

You dont discourage them... in a lot of cases, given ambulance chasers etc get tarred with the same brush, its an off shore call centre somewhere and its just someone doing their job. Its probably a horrible job to have, I know I did my time doing outbound telesales and I wouldnt wish it on anyone, and they'd love to have a better job but have families to feed etc. 

Those taking a job breaking the law receive no sympathy from me, would you be nice to someone breaking in to your car ?  They get a straightforward " f off and stop calling me"

So you don't have 'fun' by stringing these people on then?
No, you don't.
You kill the call.

That's very different to the post I referenced when I referred to wasting time.

I'd be surprised if any of the callers in these off-shore call centres understand law breaking in the UK.

Your analogy of someone being paid to call a telephone number given to them on a list is nothing like someone breaking into a car or house.

Ozzig

Pollycat said:

So you don't have 'fun' by stringing these people on then?
No, you don't.
You kill the call.

Just to add, aside from the fun of asking "Can I call you Dave ?" and then repeatedly calling them different names each time you address them, I have noticed that since I started winding them up I have received fewer calls.

A couple of years ago as soon as I heard the background noise, the initial silence after answering as I was assigned to an "agent", the very poor quality line noise, I used to hang up. Had 4 or 5 calls a week then, now it's one a month. 

I like to think it's my wasting their time that's reduced the number of calls, but I suspect it could just be the telco's improving their takedown times.

eddddy

If I have a bit of time on my hands, I sometimes chat with the off-shore scammers that call me, and try to steer the conversation around to why they are trying to scam people. I've had some interesting replies.

One guy told me he was proud to be a scammer, because it meant he could provide for his wife and family. If he didn't scam, his family would be destitute.

Another guy (presumably from India) said it was only fair, because the Colonial British stole from India (he mentioned the Koh-i-Noor diamond), so Indian people now have the right to steal money back from British people.

And others frequently boast about how much money they make, and how stupid people deserve to be scammed.


Obviously, I mentioned the reasons why scamming is wrong, but I don't think they really took any notice.

molerat

Pollycat said:

molerat said:

Pollycat said:

Ozzig said:

As above, have some fun...

I'd rather not waste my time having 'fun' at someone else's expense.

As posted above:

DullGreyGuy said:

You dont discourage them... in a lot of cases, given ambulance chasers etc get tarred with the same brush, its an off shore call centre somewhere and its just someone doing their job. Its probably a horrible job to have, I know I did my time doing outbound telesales and I wouldnt wish it on anyone, and they'd love to have a better job but have families to feed etc. 

Those taking a job breaking the law receive no sympathy from me, would you be nice to someone breaking in to your car ?  They get a straightforward " f off and stop calling me"

So you don't have 'fun' by stringing these people on then?
No, you don't.
You kill the call.

That's very different to the post I referenced when I referred to wasting time.

I'd be surprised if any of the callers in these off-shore call centres understand law breaking in the UK.

Your analogy of someone being paid to call a telephone number given to them on a list is nothing like someone breaking into a car or house.

Even though the phone call may be trying to steal much more than a burglar would ?

prowla

The "your computer has a virus" ones I tend to keep on the phone a while, on the basis that it may stop or delay them getting to someone who will fall for it.

Cold callers I say I'm registered with TPS and can they remove my number from their system; I then add the number to a "Junk" contact so I'll know to ignore it next time.

prowla

Ozzig said:

As above, have some fun...

I've had a hot air balloon crash into a building knocking tiles onto my car and giving me whiplash, but I was lucky as the injuries would have been worse if I had been sober, but I'm relieved they called so I can claim.

I've had them agree to two iPhone MAX 14s for free and they'll pay me £40 in Amazon cards delivered in unmarked brown envelopes, when I say agree, not understand sarcasm, pass me to a colleague who clearly had dealt with my sort before.

On a particularly slow day, spoke to three Microsoft helpdesk analysts and let them remote onto my sandbox virtual machine (Windows XP for extra fun) and eventually, they couldn't resist opening the text file on the desktop named "My Bitcoin stuff" only to read a rather impolite message stored therein  
But even then they were still asking me to fill in a "secure online form", which was them opening notepad and pasting in a dozen questions for bank account number, name, sort code etc etc 
To the point I got bored and hung up the phone, their "finance" guy called me back insisting I pay for their services I explained I was intentionally wasting their time so they weren't conning someone who would actually fall for such a poor scam and the response was, they can accept gift cards for payment if the bank was a problem.

If I'm doing nothing in particular I'll have a play:

• To see where they were going I did once follow all their instructions but someow just couldn't find the menu option they were telling me to press; after a few attempts they put me through to a manager who asked me what OS I was running; I said Linux, at which point he told me off for lying to them as they'd asked if it was Windows, to which I said they'd been lying to me from the outset, so I was just wasting their time; the bloke said "you're one of those techies aren't you"..
• Another time they said my computer was sending them messages, so I replied which computer?; after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing we established that I had several computers, so they responded with "all of them!" (which did get a LOL).
• I've also had them wait whilst I go to the other room to turn on the computer, which always seems to tak an inordinately long time for some reason.
• Another time I let them tell me things and then when they told me to install some software (their remote access app) I told them I was on a company machine and wasn't allowed to install things on it.
• I've even managed to get one to hang up on me when I started asking them impolite questions - just remember they are thieves and don't deserve any respect.
  

ElefantEd

I've kept these scammers on the line for 30 minutes - usually managing to do something else more constructive at the same time - being inexplicably clueless about what the windows key is, how to type into the pop up box, how to turn my computer off and on and so on.

The last one I had, a couple of months ago, I managed to convince I was born in 1897, took her 10 minutes and a divert to her supervisor before they cottoned on!

I only bother occasionally but it can be entertaining and as others have said, means they are scamming someone more vulnerable.

Murphybear

DullGreyGuy said:

QQQ said:

I usually say "oh, that's exactly what I need, please hold the line a couple minutes, I will finish the parallel call and get back to you" and put them on hold forever. But they do not wait for longer than half a minute. Is there any more efficient way to discourage them from doing their nasty job? Without spending too much of my own time, of course.

You dont discourage them... in a lot of cases, given ambulance chasers etc get tarred with the same brush, its an off shore call centre somewhere and its just someone doing their job. Its probably a horrible job to have, I know I did my time doing outbound telesales and I wouldnt wish it on anyone, and they'd love to have a better job but have families to feed etc. 

The person running the place isnt going to care if you keep an agent on hold for 30 seconds, its known you will have a low hit rate but salaries are pittances and its not typically places with good employee rights etc if you dont hit your targets. 

friolento said:

I only have a mobile phone now, which is set to divert calls from unknown numbers to voicemail. No scammer has yet left any voicemail for me.

What do you mean "unknown"? as in withheld or just ones not in your address book?

Given I get legitimate calls from unknown people to my phone all the time the later isnt an option for me. I have tried diverting withheld numbers to voicemail but get the problems like when my GP calls or a complaints handling person in a bank who's WFH etc. They go to voicemail, they leave a voicemail but you cannot then call them back because if you call the GP surgery you've a 20 minute wait to get answered followed by them telling you the Dr tried, you didn't answer so you'll have to go on the call back list again but its full for today call tomorrow. Likewise banks saying the complaints team dont take inbound calls. 

I do have some numbers set to go to voicemail from previous scammers and I have had several messages left saying its HMRC phoning and that I owe tax and must press 5 now else I'll be arrested immediately etc.

We only use a landline and when family, friends, GP etc call it flashes up who it is eg “DOCTOR”.  Any number we’re not familiar with or says it’s an Overseas call goes to the answerphone and if it’s a genuine call they will leave a message.  We don’t get a huge number of phone calls anyway.  

Thinking about it I did answer one of these calls recently and spouted a Russian Christmas Carol at them (I did Russian at school for a year and it’s about the only thing I remember.  I knew it would come in handy one day ).   They soon rang off.