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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.
...went something like this.
"WTH is this? Scammers?"
*Press 1*
"Hello, what's the make of your vehicle?"
"May I ask who I'm speaking to?"
*click*
--
After receiving (and hanging up on) a few more of these calls, I can't say I'm sorry to see their asses getting handed to them in court.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Asked if I had seen a .. Sandra O'Connor... or something like that. I forget.
It was kinda obvious to me that this was a scam when they told me my warranty for the car was due to expire soon.
I don't have a car.
Waiting for an amusing sig.
I'm so conflicted... Fox News actually reporting something that affects me in a positive way? I don't know how to feel!
I know I personally received several hundred calls from these guys. I had numerous people tell me they had received the same types of calls. The FTC can stop patting themselves on the back, the fact that it took this long is embarrassing.
Its funny, as soon as the car warranty scammers stopped calling last month, I now get robocalls for some cheapo health care ripoff. On my cell, on the do not call list. So it begins again.....
What really bugs me about all this is that despite what were probably thousands of reports to the gov't, nothing was done and nobody really brought it up in the media until they accidentally bothered NY senator Chuck Schumer. Had they not stumbled onto his number, one wonders if they would still be in business.
Yup. I even reported a handful of calls to the FTC (using their website) just a few weeks before Chuck Schumer declared war on these guys.
I got a letter back from the FTC telling me that they couldn't do anything because "I didn't provide them enough information". I gave them the time of day, the CID, and what the robo greeting said. But I guess because I didn't talk to a human, it didn't count.
This should be considered a major FAIL for the FTC and the Do Not Call list. Which is a shame, too, because the DNC has been a great success with this exception.
It's embarassing that it took the FTC this long to catch them, and to add insult to injury, it only took them about a month after Chuck Schumer made a stink.
I hope that after these criminals are tried, a second investigation starts to find out why the FTC had their head up their ass.
-David
I always take my car in for service at the dealership. I just trade for a new car when the mechanics there tell me it's time to replace the blinker fluid. The mechanics let me in on the auto industry secret that once that happens, it's only a matter of time before everything starts breaking down. It's saved me a lotta hassle. Sure, it's more expensive, but this is one of those instances where you get what you pay for.
The real problem here is the phone companies. I tried reporting this issue to AT&T a few times, and found them to be singularly disinterested. They wouldn't even tell me who kept calling my cell phone over and over, trying to sell me the same thing over and over. The scammers were clearly robo calling as they didn't know *who* they were calling. I received from a few to several of these calls each week for several months.
Scams like this undoubtedly generate hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of dollars a year in revenue from long distance and 800 number services, which probably include helping the scam artists hide their contact information from their victims. The phone companies had no interest at all in this problem, even when clearly thousands of legitimate customers complained about it. Not only were they making money from the scammers annoying calls, but the phone company also offered me the chance to pay an additional monthly fee to stop solicitation calls. When I asked point blank, they admitted that the service would not stop the robotic calls about which I'd called to complain. In addition to that, the phone companies were charging air time to victims, when the robotic caller dialed cell phones (like mine).
The phone companies, all of them, are complicit in this scam, and should be jointly prosecuted with the scammers.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
I worked briefly for a mail order company that dabbled in [legitimate] telemarketing. The trouble is that the phone company won't provide information about whether a particular number is a cell phone or land line. You used to be able to tell, but after number portability went through, you had no way of knowing. We tried not to call them, and if we were told they were cell phones, we would mark them off and never call them again. However, it was impossible to be 100% sure; what was a land line last year could be a cell number this year..
At least that WAS the situation. Things were in rapid flux. I think the larger data warehouses are putting together lists of cell phone numbers, that you can buy and use to suppress those numbers out of your file; but they're not cheap, and they aren't complete.
No. See "Common Carrier". You really don't want the phone companies to be able to refuse service to anybody...
The real problem is the government's indifference — took millions of complaints over years for them to enforce the law...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The real problem is the government's indifference — took millions of complaints over years for them to enforce the law...
Millions of complaints had nothing to do with it. IIRC, Senator Schumer got one of there calls and the rest is history.
Note to telemarketer: scrub congressmen from phone list.
Yeah, reporting these guys is usually useless. They spoof the caller ID info (this is where the phone companies should be atomic dope slapped) and the associates, if you get one, are well trained in not telling you anything that would be useful on a report. Full name? Nope. Company name? Nope. Address? Hell no. Return number? Nope.
In reality, if they were taking it seriously all the FTC would need is your phone number, the time of the call, and your provider. Then they could get records from the provider (ie. AT&T) and know where the call came from, who it's registered to, and so on. The phone companies make damn sure to have that info, because otherwise they couldn't get paid.
Which, of course, is why the FTC were able to move so fast once Senatorman got called.