Slashdot Mirror
Auto Warranty Robocall Scammers Busted
ectotherm writes "The nice people behind the recorded phone messages stating 'By now you should have received your written note regarding your vehicle warranty expiring...' — the ones who instantly hang up when you ask for the name of the company — have been busted. Fox News did a little background digging on the four people charged." Don't know about you, but I received three or four postcards in the mail from these scammers, as well as uncountable robocalls. The FTC says they cleared $10M since 2007.
This is typical of a con. You "made" them by asking questions. They are not looking for smart people. :)
Unfortunately, not obvious to my grandmother. I wanted to fucking kill these people. 6 years ago, I had my grandmother co-sign on a truck to help me get affordable payments. Everything went very well, was perfect on the payments, and eventually sold the truck.
I would get yelled at ALL THE TIME about these people that kept calling my grandmother about the "truck" and trying to sell her a warranty. It was MY responsibility to get them to stop calling and update their records to get rid of her phone number.
Of course that was impossible. Could I even explain it to her so that she would understand it was a scam? No. She would forget about that within a week, just in time for the next phone call.
The only possible way these people could be more annoying is to annoy somebody else that I CAN'T ignore to the point she would drive me batshit crazy.
I hope they publish this pendeho's address in the court documents. I feel like a road trip.......
They don't know. My warranty expired 2 years ago and I get the cards and calls too. They seem to be mailing/calling people based on year model of the car and normal manufacturer's warranty, then continuing the mailings for several more years in case you got an extended warranty. People figure, "wow, they know when my warranty is up, so they must have gotten some "inside" info from the manufacturer, so they must be legit." It's just a variant of the perfect prediction scam.
I sent in a report about this scam several weeks before you sent yours in. They sent me a letter saying "Thanks for your information. We have received many other complaints and we are currently investigating the matter." I provided caller ID information (bogus though it was) and a URL of a website I found where people had been looking in to the same number. I also referenced a few similar calls my sister-in-law had received.
So... your report probably was incomplete :P
I like how Jiffy Lube wanted to sell me $10 wal-mart wiper blades for $40.
Network Foundations LLC. 33 North LaSalle, Suite 2110 Chicago, IL 60602 Tel: (312) 235-2400 Fax: (312) 276-8780 Email: sales@networkfoundations.com Florida Profit Corporation VOICE TOUCH, INC. Filing Information Document Number P07000116212 FEI/EIN Number 261281522 Date Filed 10/23/2007 State FL Status ACTIVE Effective Date 10/23/2007 Principal Address 22 PROMENADE AT LION'S PAW DAYTONA BEACH FL 32124 US Mailing Address 22 PROMENADE AT LION'S PAW DAYTONA BEACH FL 32124 US M Dunne 1209 Sunland Rd Daytona Beach, FL 32114 (386) 253-7131 Cant really confirm the last number.
because its robodial.
they have a few operators, but they call hundreds of lines at once.
they never have enough operators(i wonder why, not enough demoralized crackheads locally?), so you get disconnected usually upon tryin to connect.
It's true, the big 3 will sell your information..... if you let them.
If you want to remove yourself from these lists, you can dial 888-5-OPT-OUT, enter your SSN and opt out of all of these pre-approved credit offers / marketing sales pitches FOR LIFE! It lessens the amount of junk mail and it even helps prevent identity theft.
No. See "Common Carrier". You really don't want the phone companies to be able to refuse service to anybody...
Depending on which part of the OP you're disagreeing with, I'd say you're right or wrong.
Common carrier status does probably give them legal cover for what they're facilitating.
But as far as being complicit, there is little doubt.
I once worked for an American cellular company and there was a website (a public one) which could be used to lookup information about any phone number /shrug
Really though, a 'legitimate' telemarketing company should only be calling people they have an existing relationship with, not blanketing an area code or buying a list of phone numbers.
On the topic of the story, I had a number of calls from the scammers on my cell but they were always recognizable by the simple fact that the area codes weren't local. (I live in Canada and they were usually California numbers)
When phones were newer it was just a matter of looking at the first 3 digits in some places. Back in my hometown in the mid 90s almost all of the local land line numbers were sure to be a certain couple prefixes, whereas the numbers you got from Verizon were different
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
I like how Jiffy Lube wanted to replace my automatic transmission fluid and showed me a dirty round air filter that needed to be replaced. I have a Subaru with a manual transmission and a square air filter (which was brand new at the time, because I had just replaced it myself the previous weekend). The only reason I took it there was because I didn't want the hassle of hauling used motor oil to the recycling center. I still take it there, but they don't even try to sell me wiper blades anymore, because if they even think about it, I tell everyone in the waiting room about the transmission fluid and air filter. Only had to do that once before they got the message.
--Insert catchy
I kept getting these scam calls on my cell phone, and I complained to the FCC but get I kept getting more scam calls. The FCC should have been on the ball about this long ago as they already have strict laws against automated dialing:
"(a) No person or entity may: (1) Initiate any telephone call (other than a call made for emergency purposes or made with the prior express consent of the called party)using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice;"
"To any telephone number assigned to a paging service, cellular telephone service, specialized mobile radio service, or other radio common carrier service, or any service for which the called party is charged for the call."
Title 47
When a tiny glimpse of a nipple showed up on TV they were on it instantly even though almost everyone already has one pair of nipples and seeing a third one on TV isn't going to harm anyone. Then there's shit like this where people run telemarketing scam and yank millions of dollars while the FCC just sits there with head in ass doing nothing about it. Perhaps they should change the name from Federal Communications Commission to Federal Censorship Commission because obviously they care about nothing other than preventing people from saying fuck on TV.
I heard (I live in NY) that they got his unpublished personal cell phone number....That was what did it.
I've been getting these assholes on my cell, but not at home phone.
WTF? Over?
I worked for Verizon 10 and a half years fielding all kinds of calls about stuff like this, general repair problems, service order issues and etc. I can tell you first hand that there is absolutely nothing the representative you get on the phone can do about any of this. I even put in a few repair tickets to try to get help from the Central Office tech or a field tech, but there isn't much they can do, either. Congress is finally considering making caller ID spoofing illegal. However, the way the phone system is designed means that robocalls are one of the things that scammers can do to game the system - even if caller ID spoofing were not possible. The system is set up to allow anyone to call anyone else for any purpose - thus the "common carrier" statutes that everyone on /. likes to talk about and accuse the ISP's of breaking.
There is simply no way of communicating the fact that the rep is receiving lots of complaints about scammers to anyone that can do anything (the FCC and FTC). The reps are not allowed the time to lodge complaints with those two organizations on your behalf - even when the rep has Internet access to those organizations' web sites. So, if you want to lodge complaints about a scammer, you need to do it with the FCC and FTC, because the phone companies and their reps cannot stop the calls themselves or they break the common carrier statutes.
Generally, the reps have 4 minutes (as a monthly average) to interact with you over the phone. If they exceed this monthly average, then they are disciplined. At Verizon, they generally have only 30 seconds of "work time" (as a monthly average), which is the time they spend doing something after hanging up with you and before becoming available for their next call. It is very easy to exceed these averages and the reps have to work very hard to stay under those averages on every call. If the rep gets too interested in providing actual customer service, they will exceed those averages very quickly and be terminated if they continue to provide actual customer service. So, perhaps you can now understand why they try to get you off the phone so quickly. They are trying to do the best job they can according to the parameters that those who sign their paychecks have defined.
They didn't get anything. By all accounts they were not operating from a list instead were simply dialing all possible numbers. Lists cost money and if you war dial you call all the no-call and unlisted numbers.
I find being offended by me offensive.
You call AT&T about a problem, and you should expect them to do something
Honestly, the phone company (AT&T, Verizon, whomever) likely doesn't have the information needed to solve your problem anyways. If you are calling because Bogus Warranty, Inc at 800-555-5555 called you, that's great but your phone company can't even verify that the number belongs to who you think it belongs to; they don't have that information - nobody at your phone company does. And to make it even better, the phone company has no right to access that information.
You know how when you get spammed, you can run a WHOIS search on evilspammingdomain.com and figure out who owns it? There exists no such tool for 800 numbers. Instead we have a list of hundreds of Responsible Organizations ("RespOrgs") who do toll-free registration. They - and only they - know who is behind the toll-free numbers. But they are under no obligation to share that information with anyone; hence they generally won't do it unless a subpoena is served.
Though of course the subpoena is useless because by the time someone has obtained it and served it, the customer of the toll-free number has already left for a different RespOrg and the RespOrg who was just served has already deleted the records.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.